I think the report brings out some key factors in the Indian Scenario which are holding back progress on mobile TV.

Firstly we do not have 3G ( Yet). Mobile TV on GSM/GPRS is not practical.
Secondly, we do not yet have a terrestrrial broadcast policy, though TRAI has given recommendations.

Mobile Tv services are not only TV- they are multimedia and downloads, user generated content and interactive TV. The entire mobile sector can be on a higher pedestal once these are resolved.

Need for Multifunction Phones for growth of multimedia services

One fact which seriously bothers me is that while a greater and greater number of services are becoming available over the mobile networks, the market is seriously getting segmented into phones which can perform some types of functions but not others.

Examples are many. The segmentation of market today is in the form of business phones ( a la blackberry), multimedia phones ( a la Walkman or Rockr 6), location based service capable phones, Phones which support terrestrial mobile TV( a la Nokia N72, N93),Phones which will support 3G ( a la Sony Ericsson P1i) and others which will not.

Then there is a dimension of phones which are locked to networks and will permit some actions and not others. The market will get further segmented when new phones such as iphone will be launched which will have their own mass appeal.

The question before service providers then is how to address the market? If a user has a newly bought phone, which is very advanced and so on, but does not support mobile TV then such a customer is obviously not in the covered customers category.

The most traditional way to address such an issue has been to somehow bundle the handset with the service and recover the handset amount in future subscriptions. It would be desirable in such cases that the phones offered are multifunctional for greater user acceptability, such as supporting push mail, multimedia and LBS functions.

A body such as OMA needs to take a lead in this matter for higher growth of services and critical mass of customers for service providers.

http://www.mobiletvbook.com