Let it be low brow

As for the mobile TV part of the Ovum briefing mentioned below: the message there was that (surprise!) it’s still very early days. Okay, there are some more subscribers (Vodafone in the UK reports 200,000 and Orange France 336,000). But it’s still the same old story on the other crucial points: standards (too many), spectrum (not enough), handsets (too small/expensive), programming (not quite the right mix yet), money (how do you make it exactly). “Promising if not spectacular” is how Eden Zoller, a principal analyst at Ovum put it.

She did point out a very successful service being offered by mobile operator 3. Although it’s not a traditionally linear form of television, SeeMeTV, which lets subscribers upload videos and then get a cut for every time they’re downloaded by other subscribers, has had something like 4 million downloads so far. How did they do it? By going for the lowest common denominator, it seems. “Basically it’s smut,” she said. “Not much has been done with this format yet.”