Europe Monitoring South Korea’s Mobile TV Market

When it comes to mobile TV, everyone has an eye on South Korea.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that “when it comes to the mobile phone industry, the common wisdom is that Asia is five years ahead of Europe, which is five years ahead of the U.S.”

So it is with mobile TV, where over 4 million mobile-TV-capable phones have already been sold in Seoul, an amazing figure considering that the city has a total population of 10 million.

As the European market for mobile TV gains steam, the industry is scrambling to gauge the public’s appetite for various forms of content, similar to what’s happening here in the U.S. “It is still very early but we are seeing certain trends emerging,” Henrik Rinnert, managing director of MFD, Germany’s sole mobile TV carrier, said in the article. “Content-wise, what interests users most is news — information programming. That’s followed by comedy in short clips. At the moment, longform of any sort isn’t what people want to watch on their mobile screen.”

“In Italy, the trend is similar, but decidedly sports-based. According to a spokesman for mobile carrier Vodafone-Italia, the most popular mobile TV programming is results and footage of soccer matches. ‘Without soccer, the market here would be much less viable,’ the spokesman said.”

Mobile TV a hot ticket in Europe, MIP [The Hollywood Reporter]

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