Nokia: Mobile TV in turmoil

You know things can’t be all good with mobile TV when one of its biggest proponents – Nokia favours the DVB-H standard – admits that rollout aren’t going as well as the company had hoped.

Head of internet services t the Finnish handset maker, Niklas Savander, told Reuters that broadcast mobile TV “is a bit in turmoil… We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads. Roll out is slower than also we anticipated a couple of years ago.”

Nokia may not have predicted it, but from the time mobile TV started being discussed, a lot of other people did. The success of downloads is probably due not only to their greater accessibility – everyone can get 3G, not everyone can get DVB-H programming – but also it seems to suit mobile usage patterns better. A three minute snack TV program is handy when you’re waiting for the bus, a 30 minute broadcast TV program less so.