Qualcomm and its Japanese partners are preparing to launch a MediaFLO mobile service in Japan, after what it sees as encouraging results from a survey of Japanese mobile TV users.
Qualcomm and KDDI have gone to 3,000 Japanese people in a survey asking what they think of broadcast mobile TV, and concluded that the outcome appears to suggest that now the Japanese public know enough about mobile TV by experiencing ISDB-T, it is even more receptive to a slightly higher quality service that Qualcomm thinks its technology can deliver.
The brunt of the survey was whether or not Mobile TV in Japan could also be pay TV, given that the existing ISDB-T services are free to air in Japan.
In Japan the 1 Seg ISDB-T mobile TV has already been launched during 2006, and it is largely thought to be inferior in quality terms to almost all the other OFDM based datacasting technologies that dominate mobile TV, offering around half the data rate.
As a result in Japan there are two separate trials are under way for MediaFLO with KDDI and Softbank who have both joined the increasingly influential FLO Forum
At Faultline we have always said that ISDB-T is merely Japan’s first mobile TV technology, not its last, and we expect one or more of the other technologies to make a showing here, and MediaFLO through its KDDI and Softbank relationships seem to have the edge. But similarly DVB-H, cellular multicasting using BCMCS, as well as an uptake of S-DMB from an existing satellite shared with Korea, may all emerge to rival ISDB-T.
What happens in ISDB-T is that each chunk of TV spectrum that was previously used for a single analog channel is broken into 13 delivery channels called segments and can carry a mobile TV version of the same TV channel in a single segment and use the rest of the segments to either deliver one High Definition signal or three standard definition channels.
The survey was conducted by Accenture and was specifically designed to show that MediaFLO remains viable in Japan, despite widespread adoption of ISDB-T.
‘We are convinced that the survey results illustrate that paid mobile broadcasting services are attractive to Japanese customers despite the availability of the free ISDB-T service, and we believe that both services can coexist,’ said Kazuhiko Masuda, president of MediaFLO Japan Planning. ‘Based on these extremely positive results, MediaFLO Japan Planning intends to move forward with preparations for a commercial service in Japan.’
Although Qualcomm and partners insist that MediaFLO technology has advantages over other mobile multicast technologies it is roughly the equivalent of a DVB-H service according to most implementers and broadcast specialists.
However MediaFLO claims it has faster channel switching time, and better in-building reception, and uses less power than DVB-H.
‘We see Japan as a leading market for deployment of advanced mobile services like mobile TV,’ said Peggy Johnson, president, Qualcomm Internet Services and MediaFLO Technologies. ‘The survey results demonstrate the full potential of multichannel broadcasting in Japan, and we will continue to work with KDDI to make MediaFLO available to Japanese consumers. We believe that MediaFLO is the right mobile broadcasting technology for the demanding Japanese audience.’
The survey showed that 41% of Japanese people intend to use mobile broadcast services, and that 83% of those that were given a chance to try out the MediaFLO service said they intended to use it and 92% said they liked the picture quality.
The survey shows that the most desirable content was ‘News’ and ‘Movies/Drama/Anime’
Qualcom reckons that the potential Japanese market size for paid multi-channel broadcasting to mobile phones within five years of service launch is as much as 450 billion yen ($3.8 billion) across around 40 million users
Qualcomm didn’t address the issue of where its partners would acquire the necessary spectrum to launch services.