IMS Research forecasts that by the end of 2011, nearly half a billion people will be watching TV on their cellular handsets. Driven primarily by the adoption of broadcast-based services such as DVB-H, mobile digital TV will experience 50% year-on-year growth through 2010.

Based on a recent study from IMS Research entitled Mobile TV – A Complete Analysis of the Global Market – 2006 Edition, mobile TV delivered over the cellular data network should experience strong growth and build on its early lead in the marketplace. However beginning early in 2010, cellular network-based mobile TV subscriptions will be overtaken by even quicker growth in digital broadcast services. By then, more than half of the world’s mobile TV subscribers will receive their video via a mobile digital broadcast service.

“Given the right conditions, mobile TV has the potential to spread from one customer to the next like few technologies before it,” stated one of the report’s authors, Stephen Froehlich. “If providers effectively supply compelling content, quality reception, and affordable, attractive phones, then every new mobile TV subscriber can become a mobile TV evangelist. However, to make their customers into product evangelists, mobile TV service providers and their partners must invest enough in infrastructure and technology to enable both wide population coverage and good indoor reception.”

Mobile TV – A Complete Analysis of the Global Market – 2006 Edition is IMS Research’s second study of the mobile digital TV marketplace and examines this market in cellular handsets, portable media players, and cars. It provides forecasts for shipments, handset revenues, and subscribers for ten nations and worldwide by transmission standard through 2011. The report also covers the market for broadcast mobile TV tuners and demodulators for all three platforms by standard and system-on-chip convergence path.