Mobile TV Price Tag Too High for Most?

Is cost a major factor when it comes to cell phone-based mobile television. If the results of a recent survey are any indication, most consumers are very concerned with the current and proposed price tag of get-up-and-go media. More than 70% of the respondents in a survey conducted by Tellabs and M:Metrics said that cost of service is a major consideration in mobile TV, and one that far outpaces picture quality, screen size and even available channels.

Once users get a taste of the mobile life, however, they are more apt to be concerned with things like picture quality, notes the survey, which included respondents from the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Although many users choose to cut and run once they subscribe to mobile TV services, whether it is due to the high cost or poor channel selections, says another survey of 22,000 European users that revealed more former mobile TV fans than present subscribers (by about 19%).

The two surveys and others bring out some interesting points about the current and future state of mobile TV: Are these services too expensive for the mass market, or is there just too little good content to keep subscribers interested and willing to pay for more? We think it may be more than latter than the former, since the cable industry has shown that most people are willing to pay a lot extra for some really good content - be it the latest world title fight or a new season of The Sopranos.

The M:Metrics study also showed that up to 24% of mobile TV/video service subscribers stopped using it because of quality and reliability issues, 35% hated the connection speeds, and a relatively small 6% didn't like that small viewing screen. Fortunately, advances in technology will easily eliminate two out of three of these issues. After all, we are not still watching American Idol on a 10-inch Philco black-and-white (although maybe this would be an improvement!).

Read more about the report and other research on items on mobile TV at www.eMarketer.com, which recently presented the findings of this study.