Standardising European mobile broadcast TV may retard competition: Datamonitor

19 July 2007

The European Commission (EC) yesterday announced its backing of Nokia''s DVB-H mobile broadcast TV standard, a development that London-based independent market analyst Datamonitor says may aid the mass-adoption of mobile broadcast TV services as a whole but might curb open market competition.

Datamonitor estimates Europe will have 42.7 million mobile broadcast TV subscribers in 2012 - making it the second largest subscriber base in the world after Asia Pacific.

Mobile broadcast television has the opportunity to combine two of the most successful consumer products in history; television and mobile telephony. However, since the early part of the decade there have been a number of competing formats using differing bearer technologies including MediaFLO, DMB, DAB-IP and DVB-H.

Each of these bearer formats has significant factors backing their adoption looking to generate revenue from their success. In an effort to homogenise the market, the EC is tackling fragmentation by promoting "a common European strategy" in an effort to "enable consumers and industry to reap the full benefits of economies of scale."

While DVB-H bearer technology provides an extremely attractive open standard akin to the current European terrestrial television infrastructure, the move potentially comes as a blow to an industry-led competitive marketplace.

MediaFlo, DMB and DAB-IP have all been put through trials throughout Europe and the market was expected to harmonise through technological innovation and chipset interoperability sometime in the near term.