During the research for this report, the answers to these questions have become obvious: doubt about the rise of mobile TV as a major new technology area will be swept aside by the large number of possibilities in front of the cellular and broadcasting communities.

In every single trial, of video on a handset, between 60% and 85% of the audience said, “When can I buy one?” or words to that effect. Once a consumer sees what is possible, their doubt appears to evaporate. It is only people that have seen impoverished “unicast” video services, and who also compete for spectrum with mobile voice, who continue to believe that video on a device that small is a mistake.

Unicast video will have its place, we are sure. But the early services, whether they were the Live! service from Vodafone, the huge number of TV channels offered by Orange in Europe, the VCast services of Verizon or AT&T Video and Sprint PCS services offered in the US, were all extremely limited.

In surveys of US customers that had experienced these services, around 13% to 15% of them thought that mobile TV had a future.