Wireless Informatics Forum

So what really happened to Mobile TV?

Four key factors that have prevented growth.

1) Poor handset support

Regardless of a slip in market share, Nokia remains the dominant force in the handset market. Certainly in Europe, the network carriers are looking to Nokia to deliver a strong line-up of Nokia DVB-H handsets in order to gain mass-market adoption of mobile TV services. However, this just hasn’t happened. Finland’s finest seems to have gone a little cold on the technology.

As early as last year the warning signs were there. Nokia’s head of internet services admitted that DVB-H wasn’t taking off in the way the company had hoped, and that customers seem more interested in downloading content than watching broadcasts.

It’s a classic game of chicken and egg. The carriers want Nokia DVB-H equipment before they make infrastructure investment and Nokia wants the carriers to invest and commit before they offer move product.

Today only a handful of Nokia device include built-in DVB-H compatibility. Nokia do provide an external antenna to a wider range of devices but that seems far from optimal. Even the N97 – one of Nokia’s biggest handset launches of the year, shipped without DVB-H as standard.

2. Mobile Broadband

Mobile Broadband has been the surprise success of 2009. This has had a direct impact on mobile carriers’ Mobile TV aspirations. Both services are data hungry and many carriers have reported aborting their Mobile TV strategies to save on network bandwidth and allow mobile broadband to grow.

The trend towards data bundles and all-you-can-eat price plans will continue to strain network resources. Experts predict 3G traffic volumes are set to increase by a factor of 20 by 2015.  A major tier one Mobile TV launch would undoubtedly require significant network investment and traffic prioritization strategies to mitigate the potential impact of network latency on the user experience.

3. Handset Category

DVB-H compatibility remains a feature almost exclusive to the smartphone and high-end feature phone segment. The technology has yet to find its way into mid to low-end devices . This will be critical to gaining mass-market acceptance, especially within the high-growth markets of Brazil, China, India etc.

4.) Downloading / side-loading

Who needs broadcast content when you can download and watch at your convenience?

Unlimited data plans have removed the number one barrier to data adoption – bill shock. This has opened the flood gates to users proactively seeking out their own multimedia content and downloading it to their device.

The practice of side-loading (transferring content from another device, principally a PC, via cable, Bluetooth, SD Card etc) also remains a strong channel for getting content onto the mobile handset. The practice has traditionally been leveraged for the management of music content, with consumers syncing up their playlists through brand-name and OEM proprietary music stores and library consoles. The practice is now extending to include audio-visual content.

Given the proliferation of capable technologies (and its success in the mobile enterprise market) it’s surprising that mobile email has struggled to gain a foothold in the consumer market.

Email represents a compelling mobile data service that sits complimentary to existing messaging channels such as SMS and IM. In particular, because email is known and understood by consumers it provides an easy entry into mobile data. Most consumers understand the value of email and appreciate the ability to mobilize and existing account that’s traditionally been tethered to a PC.

Certainly, carriers that have got their mobile email strategies right have seen how its availability can help to drive migration of pre-pay customers onto more profitable data contracts and even stimulate churn between networks as consumers look for the products and services that best suit their needs.

Technology, pricing or something more obvious?

The use of mobile email across the consumer market is easily distorted by the iPhone factor. Certainly the iPhone and similar peer devices have made email more accessible and mainstream, but the industry and media attention afforded to such devices far outweighs their penetration. Consider the global handset market and such devices are still the minority. So what of the rest? Most mid-range (and above) handsets ship with an email client, so why aren’t consumers leveraging the technology? If it’s not a technology or pricing barrier (the availability of inclusive data tariffs has largely removed the threat of bill shock) there must be more obvious barriers to entry that are preventing mass-market adoption.

I see two key areas of concern:

1. The configuration barrier

Configuring a handset for mobile email can still be highly complex affair, often requiring the user to enter to enter settings that are likely unknown to him. Consumers don’t have IT departments to support them like an enterprise user and asking them for server addresses, port numbers and SMTP authentication types is likely to cause high rates of service abandonment.

The consumer may have made an active decision to mobilize an email account; he may even have made a handset purchase based on that desire and he’s investing time and money in the carrier or OEM brand. Research shows that if he can’t complete set-up within 20 minutes he’s likely to abandon the service altogether. Clearly then, not only can the complexity of configuration negatively impact service adoption but it can also cause severe damage to the brand.

This all begs the question ‘aren’t the carriers and OEMs providing the necessary settings support?’

The answer isn’t straightforward. Certainly, if you want email from one of the major international email provider brands, it’s likely that a degree of support will be offered. Typically this comes in the form of automatic configuration, often via a webmail client. However, if you want anything else you’ll be fending for yourself, especially if you want the convenience of the handset’s native email client.

2. The long tail

Unfortunately, carriers and OEMs also suffer at the hands of settings complexity and the sheer volume of providers (and their associated settings) means that most limit their support to a few key service provider partners. Unfortunately, in many markets, even the top 50 email providers will only cater for a quarter of all subscribers.

Providing support only for a small group of email services providers is simply not going to achieve consumer interest. Services such as GoDaddy have made it even easier for consumers and small businesses to register their own domains, not to mention the email services offered by tens of thousands of smaller companies and brands.

This is the long-tail of the mobile email market and consumers want to mobilize these accounts, not register for a new account on the direction of the carrier.

Rudimentary failures

The mobile industry is one that moves and innovates so quickly, that it can often be guilty of not fully appreciating the end-user experience and some of the very basic usability issues that the average consumer faces. It’s not always the tools and technologies that are lacking. Certainly, for mobile email the infrastructure and penetration of capable devices is in place across the consumer market. Instead, mass-market adoption has so far suffered at the hands of some very rudimentary failures.

These have principally been caused by services not meeting consumers’ expectations for fast, convenient and accurate settings support. Consumers don’t want to be limited in their choice of email service provider, they want to be able to mobilize an existing email account – even if it’s a private domain. There is no room for ring-fenced, tightly controlled solutions. Email strategies must be guided by consumer requirements and not by solutions that cripple the user experience in favor of carrier-convenience.

It’s an appreciation of this long-tail that will help to finally position email as a mass market consumer service in the mobile space.