Mobile TV in the US has had a good World Cup, according to viewing statistics released by MobiTV and Qualcomm’s FloTV.
But now the last ball has been kicked, are there any compelling reasons to keep watching?
FLO TV says it set several new service viewership records, with the France-Mexico game becoming its most-watched sports programme, Mexico-South Africa second most-watched and average viewing times hitting a record 41 minutes on June 22 driven by the Mexico-Uruguay game.
That also suggests a big soccer-loving Hispanic quotient watching the service, but Flo TV thinks other sports will attract big viewership figures as well
“In the coming months, we plan to add major franchises to our already strong sports line-up,” said Bill Stone, Flo TV president.
Tellingly, FLO TV does not give any actual viewership numbers, which are believed to be small. Flo TV has not taken off as hoped for on AT&T and Verizon handsets and on its dedicatedFlo TV personal television .
“There are people who love it, but the numbers are not nearly what we expected ,” Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm chief executive, admitted last month.
MobiTV gave harder numbers saying it had streamed more than 88m minutes of World Cup coverage up to July 2. It delivers more than 1,200 live sporting events per year but the World Cup, on ESPN Mobile TV, was its highest performing live event to date.
It expects to beat handily in 2010 the 2bn minutes of mobile media content it streamed last year on the four major US wireless carriers.
I tried both services side-by-side – MobiTV on my Sprint HTC Evo and Flo TV on the personal television.
They were both great for following the World Cup during morning commute times, when many of the games were played, but both suffered frustrating signal losses when the picture would stutter, freeze or disappear.
While the HTC-made Flo TV player is well designed and has a useful foldback stand, I found it difficult to wake up on occasions. Picture quality was bright but not that sharp.
It seems to offer little advantage over a smart phone’s service – features missing that would set it apart would be widescreen HD video, a DVR capability to pause and store programming and better content, perhaps including an added radio service.
Both MobiTV and Flo would greatly benefit from the addition of local programming and full services from the major broadcasters. The Open Mobile Video Coalition is working towards this, but mobile TV still has a way to go to reach such integration and mass adoption.
US viewers are expected to grow from 3.1m last year to 3.5m in 2010 and reach 5m by 2014,according to the iSuppli research firm.
