Screen Digest examines the market for mobile TV in 25 countries worldwide including Europe, the US and Asia. Entitled ‘Mobile TV: Business Models and Opportunities’ the analysis provides two perspectives on the market: one from the TV industry and the other from the mobile content industry. According to the report there are a myriad of issues for mobile operators, broadcasters and content owners to address if they are to make a profit from increasing customer demand for mobile TV services.

There are two delivery methods for mobile TV - Broadcast and Unicast. Throughout the report figures are provided for both in each of the three main regions, Asia, Europe and North America. The Broadcast market is expected to experience rapid growth, with the number of markets offering the service tripling in the next two years to stand at 18 by the end of 2008. In the last two years new services have been launched in Italy, the UK, Germany, the US and Japan. Screen Digest believe that Broadcast will become the most prevalent method to deliver TV to mobiles, with the more niche approach offered by Unicast complementing it with premium and added value services.

comScore releases its Video Metrix report for September 2007, revealing that nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched a video online (including both streaming video and progressive downloads), averaging three hours of video per person during the month. Google Sites, which includes YouTube.com, topped the September rankings with both the most unique video viewers and most videos viewed.

Google Continues to Lead Online Video Market

September saw Americans view more than 9 billion videos online, with Google Sites once again ranking as the top U.S. video property with 2.6 billion videos viewed (28.3 percent share of videos), 2.5 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com (27.6 percent). Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 387 million (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 381 million (4.1 percent) and Viacom Digital with 304 million (3.3 percent).

Developing a successful value-added service business is essential for future revenue growth for wireline operators. Of such services IPTV is currently one of the biggest opportunities, as it not only opens up the broadcast TV market to telecoms operators but also a whole realm of possibilities around interactive video services and applications, as well as adjacent opportunities such as advertising. IPTV has consequently become one of the most discussed topics in the consumer telecoms space over the past 12 months. This report highlights the major tends, opportunities, issues and threats faced by operators moving into this industry.

MRG's new bi-annual IPTV Forecast finds that Europe still leads the world market, while Asia and the "Rest-of-World" see emerging markets like China, Eastern Europe, Korea and Russia taking larger steps to growth. North America sees steady growth by independents, and accelerated growth by the large Telcos.

Growth for IPTV Subs projected from 13.5 million in 2007 to 72.6 million in 2011, roughly a 40% compounded annual growth rate. With an emphasis on profitability, improved operations and sustained growth, large European carriers are planning for future converged services still over 18 months away.

Although growth of IPTV subscriptions in Europe are expected to grow to more than 25 million by 2011 -- research from Parks Associates finds that operators are ARPU-challenged and facing strong competition. IPTV in Europe: Digital TV in a Hyper-competitive Market finds that telephone operators are facing growing competition from cable, satellite and digital terrestrial services and their own telco brethren that are taking advantage of local loop unbundling regulations.

“In the near future, Americans will be poised to click their remote controls more, while cable operators enjoy this prospect less,” says ABI Research vice president and research director Stan Schatt. “The introduction of network-based control — such as nPVR (network Personal Video Recorders), start-over, and time-shifting – as well as the increasing desire for VOD services, suggests that the amount of spectrum set aside for these on-demand services will increase significantly. As customers interact using their remote controls to send signals via their set-top boxes, bandwidth requirements will continue to increase for cable operators.”

Research and Markets adds of Basics of IPTV to their offering. The purpose of The Basics of IPTV is to increase understanding of the technical, economic, and business model differences that are evolving for the delivery of rich media such as video, audio, and graphics—specifically consumer television services on private IP data networks of the near future. It likewise describes alternative scenarios that might develop during the global IPTV deployment and how it could affect consumer behavior.

The home networking hardware market has reached a mature state as many broadband consumers in developed economies have already installed home network hardware to share the Internet among their PCs. However the large majority of consumers today have yet to connect a non-PC device to their network and, ABI Research believes that over time, this extension will be the core driver of overall home networking growth. Total network-enabled consumer electronics and media devices shipments are expected to grow from 92 million in 2007 to nearly 460 million by 2012, exceeding the 368 million network-enabled home gateways, routers, network adapters and home network storage products shipped the same year.

Close to 16 percent of American households who use the internet watch television broadcasts online, The Conference Board and TNS report. The number of consumers viewing entire episodes/shows on the internet has doubled from a year ago. Nearly 73 percent of online households use the internet for entertainment purposes on a daily basis and an additional 15 percent search for entertainment several times a week.

Online viewers cite personal convenience and avoiding commercials as their top two reasons for watching TV broadcasts on the Internet. Four out of every five online viewers say that watching these programs online has not changed their television viewing habits, but a small percentage claim that their traditional television viewing has decreased.

A new report from Infonetics Research, worldwide IPTV equipment revenue hit $562.4 million in the second quarter of 2007, up 33% from the previous quarter.

The report, "IPTV Equipment, Services, Subscribers, and Capex," predicts worldwide IPTV equipment manufacturer revenue will more than double between 2007 and 2010.

MRG announces the IPTV Market Leaders Report -- September 2007, which tracks the top 120 IPTV vendors in 24 regional sub-sectors based on their installed base for 6 product areas in over 600 IPTV Operations and 8 million subscribers worldwide.

"It's far too early to call the IPTV market 'mature,'" says Len Feldman, Director of IPTV Analysis for MRG, "but the industry is definitely becoming less volatile. In our last February '07 Report, 50% of the Number-One companies changed; but in this one, less than 20% of the Number-Ones changed." Yet, some volatility continues due to large increases in subscriptions (as seen at Verzion, France Telecom, Neuf Cegetel, Belgacom and Telefonica), and growing influence of Chinese vendors like Huawei, ZTE, and UTStarcom.

As revenue from standard STB sales declines along with demand in the period 2008 to 2012, STB vendors will initially rely on firmer markets for DBS, IPTV, and DTT STBs. However, according to a new study from ABI Research, by the end of the decade even those sectors will be under pressure from alternative technologies being introduced to facilitate “the connected home,” and vendors will have to add new features and functions in order to revive flagging shipment numbers.

As recently as 2001, some mobile communications experts were saying that mobile television might be a reality within 20 years, but would probably arrive much later because the technical problems were so difficult. Yet only half a dozen years later, according to a new study from ABI Research, successful mobile video technologies are largely in place. As questions about business models, distribution, and content are resolved, the mobile TV industry will take off in earnest.

Experience in France, the UK, the USA and other countries demonstrates that triple-play bundles of TV, voice and broadband services have proven themselves as a means of increasing market share, according to a new report, Quadruple-Play Bundling Strategies, published by Analysys, the global advisers on telecoms, IT and media.

Triple-play packages have enabled US cable operators to double ARPU and halve churn, says Analysys, while, in France, competing unbundlers with low-price packages that offer high broadband access speeds, free landline calls to 50 countries and IPTV services have found a very receptive market.

The DSL Forum announces new broadband and IPTV statistics at the Broadband World Forum Europe in Berlin. The statistics, prepared for the DSL Forum by industry analyst Point Topic, show that the number of people using IPTV services increased by 179 per cent in the 12 months to 30 June 2007. On the broadband access side, DSL continues to dominate with almost 66 per cent of subscribers using this technology.

Over eight million people are now connected to IPTV services. Europe added over three million subscribers in the 12 months to 30 June 2007, making it the strongest market both in terms of growth (231 per cent in 12 months) and total subscriber numbers (almost five million by 30 June 2007).