Telegent: Free-to-Air Mobile TV in the Global Market
Telegent, headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, has been making analog mobile TV receivers since 2006. 
The company’s integrated chip includes RF tuner, demodulator, decoder a, video processor and universal interfaces and is integrated into more than 80 handsets in Asia, Europe, African the Middle East and Latin America. Telegent’s founders–Weijie Yun and Samuel Sheng–just to the company public in December 2009.
MobilizedTV spoke with Telegent VP of marketing Diana Jovin about the company’s history, current position in the industry and where its product might fit in North America.
MobilizedTV: Tell us a bit about Telegent’s role in the mobile TV market.
Jovin: When we shipped our first product, what we shipped was a little bit at odds with the market. Our principal market was considered a little unconventional. Two years ago, in the global landscape, most people in the mobile TV industry hung their hats on DVB-H. The model was that operators would invest in the new broadcast ecosystem and would acquire spectrum and deliver mobile TV content to the consumer. To do this, you have to acquire spectrum on the airwaves, create towers to distribute over the spectrum, then acquire the right to content you can distribute. It’s a pretty hefty investment. The idea was that consumers, because they loved TV, would sign on. But, in Europe, those offering subscription services found that consumers weren’t willing to pay.
MobilizedTV: DVB-H never took off in the U.S., or anywhere else, I believe. What was its fate in Europe?
Jovin: It didn’t materialize. Meanwhile, against all these pilots, we came out with a technology that, when manufacturers built it into the cell phone, allows you to get free-to-air TV. Consumers get not only content for free, but the same content they get when they turn their TV on. Consumers appreciate the same experience on the handset that they get on TV: to press one button and get the show they want. If they’re not at home, they can watch it on their phones. In subscription TV, people have to get used to a different guide of programs. You have to convince them they need something they hadn’t had before.
MobilizedTV: How did the numbers pan out? Do they support the contention that free-to-air mobile TV is more of a draw?
Jovin: Within the first two years, we shipped 50 million mobile TV antennas, OEMed by handset manufacturers. In 2009, the research firm Forward Concepts said that Telegent’s antennas were involved in 52 percent of the mobile TV in the world. In the first year, the handsets were largely in retail markets in Southeast Asia and the Middle East where people buy the handset first and then choose the carrier. Then it went to Latin America, where handsets are offered in carrier portfolios and retail markets.
MobilizedTV: Why do operators like it? Doesn’t it offer competition to its own content offerings?
Jovin: It’s a free feature on a handset and a way to retain and attract subscribers.
MobilizedTV: What bout the fact that this is an analog mobile TV offering. Much of the world is already digital.
Jovin: We’ve focused on emerging markets, where analog broadcast TV is widespread and will continue to be widespread for some time to come. We’ve been working on digital technologies, and we’ve created a single chip PC TV receiver that enables netbooks, lapbooks and so on, so consumers can receive free-to-air TV broadcasts, supporting both the analog and DTV-H digital standard.
MobilizedTV: You’re not in the U.S. market and, of course, in the U.S., the broadcasters have launched their own free-over-the-air mobile TV standard, ATSC.
Jovin: The U.S. market is interesting. The industry has been supporting Mobile DTV-H standard, based on the ATSC standard. It requires some capital investment on the part of the broadcaster, who has to split or multiplex the signal to get the mobile signal. It’s much closer to our strategy of the free-to-air. On the other hand, because it does require participation from the broadcaster, it makes adoption a little more tricky. Consumers won’t receive the the full slate of programming.
The free-to-air strategy will be more successful than subscription. This model can pave the way for getting consumers to watch TV on other devices–and then you have a platform to deliver premium services and related, complementary services. There’s been a lot of attention given to monetizing mobile TV based on content delivery. There is a lot of potential in monetizing mobile TV around free-to-air mobile TV as a content platform.
MobilizedTV: Will Telegent enter the U.S. market?
Jovin: To be honest, Telegent hasn’t made a statement about the U.S. market. We are pursuing a strategy of supporting free-to-air TV on handsets. We haven’t made a public statement if we will enter the U.S. market and if so, the time frame.
As a technology provider, we started working with providers focused on Asia. Because the model of handset adoption is largely retail markets, the innovation cycle is much shorter than what you see in the U.S. You have a shorter handset churn; people replace their handsets much more quickly. People carry multiple SIM cards and pop them in and out. In the U.S., we have four carriers that control handset availability to the consumer. You have to have a relationship with the carriers, and because people sign 2-year contracts around phones, people hold on to handsets for much longer. If you’re a technology provider and you’re developing a strategy, development happens in the Asia market first and you can draw conclusions as to why that is.
MobilizedTV: What lessons can we in the U.S. draw from what’s happening in the global Mobile TV marketplace?
Jovin: What’s interesting to observe is the speed at which free-to-air mobile TV technology has taken hold in the global market. We announced in late 2009 the point in time when we achieved the 50 million milestone; we don’t comment on number of units anymore. When you look at the Forward Concepts report, it gives you a sense of how prevalent analog broadcast is. Analog TV will persist some time in the global marketplace. The speed at which the technology has been adopted gives you a sense of what consumer preferences are. That’s a message that can be applied globally. Free-to-air mobile TV has a role to play in emerging and developed markets alike.
Tags: analog mobile TV, ATSC, DVB-H, Forward Concepts research firm, free-to-air mobile TV, global mobile TV, Mobile DTV-H, mobile TV, mobile TV antennas, MobilizedTV, monetizing mobile TV, subscription mobile TV, Telegent Systems
This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Content, Devices, Home Feature, Monetizing Mobile.
Repost from a LinkedIn discussion comment (at request of MobilizedTV.com)
An interesting take on mobile TV from Telegent: offer the service in an uncomplicated way and people will use it.
Interesting, too, to look at the S. Korea experience of terrestrial free to air mobile TV. Something like 30m receive devices sold to date, around half of these in cellphones with the rest split between PMPs, GPS devices for in-car/dashboard use, USB sticks and inbuilt to laptops and other devices. A stroll around any Korean city will immediately show the pervasive nature of mobile TV - on the subway, in taxis, in street markets, coffee shops. Korea uses the DMB digital mobile TV standard - the same transmission system as DAB/DAB+ radio (in various combinations the standard used in 24 countries). A key point perhaps is that the Korean mobile TV multiplexes are owned by broadcasters, not telcos. Broadcasters would like to have a stand alone revenue model for mobile TV and this is likely to come now from metadata/interactive content rather than the TV content itself being encrypted and charged per se. Typical Korean offering is 11 TV channels and a similar number of radio channles. Take note that this is a combined radio + TV offering.
Norway also has free to air mobile TV, again using DMB, built on the back of existing DAB networks and can offer up to 9 TV channels alongside some 20+ existing DAB radio channels, all of these receivable on the same device. Incidentally, utilising a DAB infrastructure probably made mobile TV in Norway the most cost effective deployment in the world. Take note (again) this is a combined radio + TV offering.
Korea and Norway - and other countries - are demonstrating a public appetite for broadcaster-led mobile services as opposed to the hitherto subscription models so far tried by telcos. There is a clear differentiator in free to air mainstream mobile TV channels with free to air radio and together these make something more compelling & appealing than purely subscription-based and non-mainstream TV content.
A key benefit of the Korean/Norwegian choice of DMB, however, undoubtedly lies in the ability to deploy these networks incrementally in terms of cost and spectrum/channel capaity, allowing a scalable and affordable approach to building the networks. Similarly, broadcasters in China find it attractive to deploy mobile TV content over DAB networks even though there is a competing “telco” technology in CMMB. Japan’s ISDB-T (1-Seg) system shares some attribute similarities, and it can be no coincidence Japan enjoys success in device volume sales whilst its content is free to air.
Several inescapable conclusions:
- consumers care little for the technology as long as it just works;
- risk-averse network operators are less willing now to commit to extensive new network infrastructure required for UHF and higher frequency delivery;
- quality of service necessary for pay mobile TV had network cost implications are an order of magnitude greater than necessary for free to air networks;
- consumers expect the same broadcast content as regular TV as a minimum;
- broadcasters are unwilling to cede content distribution to telcos.
- mobile TV without radio is like a burger without a bun.
Significant damage was suffered in the progress of mobile TV, particularly in Europe as a consequence of the standards battle. Instead of allowing the market to determine the most appropriate system, all effort was focused on lobbying for one particular technology and an unquestioned telco-led pay model whilst the elephant in the room was actually that consumers did not want to pay for mobile TV. The industry got tired waiting for pay mobile TV to succeed and failed to recognise that free to air mobile TV is a vital component of its appeal.
Free to air requires a different mindset to the whole business, and in turn impacts on cost of networks, quality of service, whether access to content is controlled by telcos or not, and whether telcos are merely device intengrators (as they are for other device features) whose revenue actually derives from enhanced device use and interactivity.
It is ironic that telcos are seemingly happy with apps. like Facebook which encourage device use and traffic, yet repeatedly fail to appreciate how radio or FTA mobile TV can do the same - and more - for ARPU.