According to a Reuters story, only 5% of Europeans said they were interested in getting mobile TV in the next 12 months. This is according to a Gartner report on mobile video.

Asians were more interested: 20% of Asians said they would watch mobile TV.  The Reuters story said that 1) a lack of business models, 2) various mobile TV technologies and 3) a shortage of airwaves has slowed the takeup of mobile TV.

In mobile TV, DVB-H broadcasts are gaining popularity in Asia, but another technology, MediaFlo by Qualcomm, is also gathering attention.

MocoNews asks: Are mobile users even interested in mobile TV? But I think if the technology is there, and the price is right, people will be interested. Smartphone users can already get a glimpse of the mobile TV future by using the Slingbox and their phones (like Treos) to watch TV from their homes.

If people are building their own mobile TV solutions today, I’d say the interest is there.

[Via MocoNews]

Technorati Tags: mobile, mobile TV, smartphones, research

Fresh from announcing their acquisition to EchoStar, Sling Media announced a new lower-priced product called Solo. The solo works with SD and HD video and costs about $179.

Sling now has the basic Slingbox AV, the HD ready Slingbox Pro and now the Slingbox Solo.

Sling also announced a new version of its SlingPlayer Mobile software for Symbian OS smartphones, including the Nokia N95. Sling users can watch their TV on smartphones like Windows and Palm Treos, and now Nokia’s N95 running Symbian.

I think it’s worth mentioning that Sling Media went beyond its hardware roots and is starting an entertainment division called “Sling Media Entertainment Group”. It was officially announced last year, and there hasn’t been much news since.

A press release says: “It is Sling Media Entertainment Group’s mission to introduce solutions that delight the consumer and drive new value for content owners and distributors.”

There are multiple job postings in New York, where the entertainment division is headquartered. Plus the group is also spearheading Sling’s Clip+Sling application, which will allow users to create short clips of what they’re watching and trade them with other people over the Internet.

In November 2006, Sling hired two executives to head the entertainment group: Jason Hirschhorn and Benjamin White.

Essentially, the division is looking to create content and community around its Sling products. And why not. If you thought the Sling boxes were a disrupting technology, wait until Sling unveils their entertainment group and video sharing.

[tags] Solo, Sling, Sling Media, place shifting [\tags]

According to an article from Light Reading, Verizon’s FiosTV service in the U.S. will be moving to an all IPTV-based system in the next three years. Currently, Verizon uses a hybrid approach using IPTV technology for its VOD service and cable TV-style RF distribution for its live TV service.

Verizon put out a press release on September 20th, touting FiosTV and its two-year anniversary. In the release, Verizon said it has 515,000 FiosTV subscribers compared to AT&T’s 100,000 subscribers for its U-verse service.

FiosTV is currently available to over 3.9 million households, which means that about 13.2% of customers have chosen to go with FiosTV.

Verizon’s impact on cable operators is being felt, too. A report by OneTrak said that FiosTV is stealing customers from cable companies in 34 cities and towns in Massachusetts where FiosTV is offered. OneTrak said that incumbent cable operators may “experience subscriber losses of 10 percent or more because of Fios competition.” Comcast reportedly lost about 2.6% of its subscribers in communities where FiosTV is offered.

Bonus: Check out the OneTrak page for lots of interesting content on FiosTV vs. the cable cos.

Technorati Tags: Verizon, FiosTV, IPTV

From the better late than never files…

I was just looking over Tivo’s financial results for the second quarter ending July 31, 2007 and saw some data on Tivo’s subscribers. It looks like Tivo is losing subscribers compared to a year ago.

“TiVo-Owned subscription gross additions for the second quarter were 41,000, compared to 74,000 gross additions for the year-ago period.”

During this past quarter, Tivo lost a net of 19,000 direct subscribers and 126,000 DirecTV subscribers for a grand total loss of 145,000 compared to a loss of 1,000 subscribers for the same period in 2006.

Tivo is losing DirecTV subscriptions because DirecTV has stopped marketing their DirecTivo service, so that’s not a big surprise. From Tivo’s results: “As expected, TiVo reported a net decline in DIRECTV TiVo subscriptions during the period as DIRECTV is no longer deploying new TiVo boxes.”

Interestingly, Tivo blamed the drop in subscriptions on a growing focus on HD sales, which essentially means customers were not buying HD Tivo DVRs or were choosing to go with the competition, such as cable or satellite HD DVRs. From the financial results: “As has been the case in recent quarters, gross subscription additions were impacted by the pace at which etailers moved to a high definition sales focus.”

On a cumulative basis, TiVo-owned subscriptions totaled 1.71 million, up 136,000 on an annual basis compared to last year.

However, total cumulative subscriptions (Tivo-owned and DirecTV) as of July 31, 2007 were 4.2 million, compared to 4.4 million in 2Q2006. That’s a drop of 221,000 cumulative subscribers from 2Q2006. Clearly, that loss is coming from DirecTV.

So the point? The DirecTV deal is costing Tivo overall customers, but somehow Tivo is managing to gain subscribers. So it’s somewhat good news, despite the drop in overall subscribers. And the numbers for this quarter don’t reflect sales from the newly unveiled lower priced Tivo HD which may help Tivo gain even more subscribers for the next reporting period.

Technorati Tags: Tivo, DVR

According to research company Parks Associates, the number of broadband households that pay for online video is about 12 million. That’s up dramatically from 2005 to 2006 when there were about 3 million.

It looks like this 300% growth in paid video content is the result of a) having video content available and b) having good content. The growth of paid video sites like iTunes, Amazon and even NetFlix is what’s driving this. Consumers want brand-name TV and movie entertainment that they can rent or buy and take to their portable devices, or TV screens.

Parks said that the market for online video is still in flux: “With issues surrounding content rights, the role of incumbent video providers, business models, and questions about how consumer electronics manufacturers and other service providers will actually succeed, the space is very fluid at this point.”

Case in point: Apple’s iTunes and how NBC Universal decided to take their content to their own Hulu.com and even Amazon.

Another interesting development is the adult entertainment market which could very well be a huge factor in paid video content. I don’t know whether Parks Associates is looking at this market, however, but it’s definitely where a lot of technological innovation happens.