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Mobile TV turns consumers off
75 per cent have no interest in it, survey finds

By Marguerite Reardon

Published: Monday 06 March 2006

According to a survey conducted by RBC Capital Markets, about 75 per cent of roughly 1,000 people polled said they have no interest in watching TV on their mobile phones. And about 70 per cent said they didn't see themselves using their mobile phones for musical entertainment.

The news could come as a blow to mobile operators, which have already spent billions of dollars upgrading their networks to accommodate new data services such as video and music downloads.

Three of the largest cellular operators in the US, Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless, have already launched video services. Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless have also introduced music download services. And Cingular supports Apple's iTunes service on some of its phones.

Even handset maker Nokia, which is investing in DVB-H, is optimistic that people will spend money on watching TV on their phones.

But judging from the results of this survey and others like it, consumers aren't as excited about the new services as the carriers may have hoped. Linda Barrabee, a senior analyst at The Yankee Group, said there was a similar response to a survey her research company conducted last July.

She said: "I think it's really hard for most people to imagine what the experience of mobile TV would even be. Right now, most people are using phones that aren't even 3G compatible. I think they'll have to see how it can really work and fit into their lives before they can really judge whether they want it."

Barrabee and some other analysts suspect that early adopters of new mobile services are likely to be people 24 years of age and younger. This market is roughly 20 per cent of the 206 million mobile phone users in the US but young people tend to be the heaviest users of text messaging and ringtone downloads, according to The Yankee Group's research.

Only about 15 per cent of the respondents in the RBC survey were between the ages of 21 and 29. No one younger than 21 years of age participated in the survey.

Marguerite Reardon writes for CNET News.com