Numbers bandied around this week attributed to China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) regulator for Mobile TV customers there, sound to us far wide of the mark. Reports have come out claiming that 1.2 million devices have already shipped there, when we’re pretty sure that just 400,000 CMMB STiMi chips are all that have shipped, from all the manufacturers combined.
But the impression that these reports give may have some considerable truth, which is that in China, its home grown Mobile TV technology is starting to take off, with the eco-system beginning to catch up with itself after the breakneck speed with which the technology was brought to market in time for just handfuls of devices to be delivered working in time for the August Olympics in Beijing.
Reports from China say to expect 10 million devices sold in 2009 and 50 million in 2010, and these numbers are attributed to the China Satellite Mobile Broadcasting Corporation, controlled by SARFT, which runs Mobile Multimedia TV broadcasting in China.
We would expect that around 600,000 devices would ship by year end and that the run rate will continue to accelerate, like Japan’s ISDB-T did in its early days, and that something over 5 million to 6 million devices will ship during 2009. While many of these will be mobile handsets, there is no reason given the number of device announcements which are NOT phones, that around one third of these should not be cheaper devices than handsets, available at retail as a consumer electronics purchase.
After that it is anyone’s guess, but given that China is now planning to encrypt their mobile TV signals at some stage during 2009, and begin some premium paid channels, predictions that it will sweep past the Japanese ISDB-T 25 million units must be a little optimistic, if China sticks to its plans.
China Mobile is now reported as having put CMMB into its TDS CDMA phone designs and China Telecom into its CDMA phones.
One step which may hold back these huge volumes is if rural China cannot jump on the bandwagon, and that would happen if the hybrid satellite-terrestrial system still needs a satellite to be put up. Previously China Satellite Mobile Broadcasting had cut a deal with an EchoStar affiliate, but that deal was put on ice when EchoStar CEO Charlie Ergen told investors that he was in renewed negotiations with China and might have to find other uses for the satellite he had ordered.
It now seems that local Chinese interests are preparing bids to put up their own satellite, which means that the 2009 timeframe for a national Mobile TV footprint will be missed, and no satellite is likely until the end of 2010. All of which may slow Chinese MoTV subs to a crawl once the service begins to charge for premium content but not before it overtakes everyone except Japan’s ISDB-T.