James Delahunty
14 Apr 2008 20:07
The world's largest mobile phone handset manufacturer Nokia has admitted that mobile television broadcasting is not catching on as previously expected. Despite the support for the DVB-H standard which is backed heavily by Nokia, only a few operators in Europe have opened any TV broadcasting services. The European Union backed the DVB-H standard last year.
"It's a bit in a turmoil," Niklas Savander, head of Nokia's Internet services, told a conference in Helsinki. Mobile phones on the market that can retrieve and playback TV programming use third-generation (3G) mobile networks, which allows the carriers to charge for data rates which ultimately can affect the overall quality of content, and the number of users.
"We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads. Roll out is slower than also we anticipated a couple of years ago," Savander said.