THE 3GSM gathering of the cellphone industry in Barcelona last month featured a session called "How Mobile is Changing TV Forever". It's a strong statement, but a declaration a few years ago that "mobile is changing music forever" would now have been proven true: artists can now make more money from ringtones than CD singles, and download-only songs regularly top the charts.
The music phone was the must-have handset last year, and Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones (the Walkman cassette player was the iPod of the Eighties) are even credited for the resurgence of the Swedish-Japanese joint venture.
Apple's iPhone, to be launched mid-year, will give music on mobile networks another boost - its iTunes service last year surpassed 1bn in downloads. A total of $9bn (R64bn) was spent on mobile music last year and this is set to grow to $32bn by 2010 (R227bn).
This is despite Edgar Bronfman, CEO of No1 music company Warner, saying at the conference how cumbersome, expensive and complicated it still is to buy a song over the air .
Can mobile TV recreate the success of mobile music? The industry is betting on it.
Network operators such as 3, Vodafone and MTN want to offer television and other multimedia services to increase declining Arpus (average revenue per user) and reduce churn. Equipment manufacturers and network builders such as Ericsson and Nokia-Siemens need new projects as sharing among operators increases (Vodacom and Cell C share many base stations, for instance) and 3G rollout in developed markets approaches completion. And handset manufacturers are always looking for new features to add as built-in digital cameras, MP3 players and push email come closer to being entry level in these markets.
There are two ways of delivering tele-vision and multimedia to the cellphone - broadcasting directly to the handset or streaming via broadband networks. Carl-Henric Svanberg, chief executive of Ericsson, the world's largest mobile-infrastructure company, says 2006 was the breakthrough year for mobile broadband. While 3G can handle video streaming, high-quality multimedia content is only really possible through the first evolution of 3G called HSDPA, which is capable of ADSL-type speeds.
There are now 196 HSDPA devices, 86 of which are phones, from 51 suppliers on the market and 98 commercial HSDPA networks in 53 countries. The eco-system is in place, says Svanberg.
Ericsson is speeding up its investment in multimedia after restructuring last year to form a division dedicated to multimedia content platforms.
Apart from a long-standing partnership with Napster, the service that popularised Internet music download in the late Nineties, Ericsson recently concluded deals with Turner Broadcasting to deliver CNN Mobile and Cartoon Network, among others channels.
More than 120 mobile network operators around the world have launched mobile TV services, including Vodacom and MTN, which are in trials in partnership with DStv, switching to a commercial service by mid-year.
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