Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Siemens and Sony Ericsson today announced their co-operation in the Mobile Broadcast Services work, started under Open Mobile Alliance, OMA. The charter of the work is to specify the enablers needed to bring broadcast services to mobile devices and to open up the market for new exciting mobile services and terminals.
A likely spearhead service of mobile broadcast is mobile phone TV, a way to receive TV-like content to your mobile phone delivered over a mobile broadcast network. In general, mobile broadcast will enable cost efficient mobile mass delivery of any multimedia content. This is believed strongly to increase the consumption of media content using mobile devices. This is expected to drive the demand of new type of broadcast enabled smart phones with colour displays, local memory and applications to consume TV-like and other multimedia content.
“Content is King”, says Steffen Ring of Motorola PCS, Chief Technology Office, “but Mobility is Queen. And we have come together to make this Royal Marriage happen.”
“NEC developed the world’s first working prototype of a mobile phone capable of receiving terrestrial digital TV broadcasting last year,” says Masaaki Ohara, Senior Manager of NEC Mobile Terminals Division. “Driving Mobile Broadcast is essential for enabling end-users to enjoy various attractive services through our mobile phones. NEC hopes to contribute to driving these activities through participating in this charter.”
“Mobile TV is one of the most fascinating new services with high consumer demand. A mobile device capable of both receiving broadcasted content and of communicating over the cellular network opens up the possibilities for innovative and exciting new services. The services can easily be accessed by consumers with these new types of devices. Nokia is happy to be one of the drivers of this development, and will introduce a mobile broadcast solution based on IPDC over DVB-H to the market,” said Seppo Sutela, General Manager, IPDC, Nokia.
Jens-Thomas Pietralla, Chief Marketing Officer and Member of the Board of Mobile Phones, Siemens Information and Communication Mobile Group explained, “The mobile phone industry is changing rapidly. A mobile phone has already become a fashion accessory, a miniature office, a gaming machine, and an eclectic entertainment device. And with growing network bandwidth converging with cheaper, more advanced handset technology, consumers have every right to start getting excited about the arrival of richer mobile broadcast content. That’s why Siemens mobile is thrilled to get involved with this charter – we will be a major part of delivering the devices that will play awesome content on the move.”
Mats Lindoff, CTO of Sony Ericsson, says: “The ability to watch TV like content in a mobile phone is a natural next step of the advanced mobile multimedia services which are increasignly popular with consumers, and Sony Ericsson will be part of driving this evolution”.
Mobile phone TV services are being introduced on the Japanese market while in Europe the market for commercial mobile broadcast services is envisaged to start to open up towards the end of 2005.