WORLD / Wall Street Journal Exclusive
China enters mobile-TV fray
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and JANE SPENCER (WSJ)
Updated: 2006-10-26 14:28
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116180798702903783-PHJp5s9a_FG_RpWgp
W6WBJ6xFLs_20061101.html?mod=regionallinks
HONG KONG -- As telecom companies and broadcasters around the globe rush
to offer television services over mobile phones, China is taking steps to
ensure that its domestic players don't miss out on the potentially
massive market.
Chinese broadcast authorities this week announced they will launch their
own technology standard for mobile TV. The Chinese standard is still in
early stages of development.
Regulators didn't suggest the domestic standard would be the only one
allowed in China. But the existence of a Chinese standard could ratchet
up competition between companies in the scramble to develop a dominant
global standard for mobile TV. Nokia Corp. of Finland and Samsung
Electronics Co. of South Korea, for example, have already invested
heavily in deploying mobile-TV services in other parts of the world.
"The Chinese government wants to spin off as much homegrown technology as
possible," says Claus Mortensen, research manager for market tracker IDC
in Hong Kong.
China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television didn't respond
to a request for an interview.
China has tried this homegrown approach to technology standards before.
It has been working for several years to develop its own standard for
so-called third-generation wireless networks -- the high-speed networks
used to deliver games, video clips and other data services to cellphones.
But with alternative 3G approaches advancing more quickly in other
countries, the Chinese standard -- not yet launched commercially -- isn't
the only one being developed in China.
Cellphone service providers and broadcasters world-wide are trying to
settle on the technology and business models behind providing video
content on cellphones. China is the world's largest cellphone market, and
analysts think its consumers may be particularly receptive to mobile-TV
services, since few have existing pay-TV subscriptions, and because
cellphone services beyond voice are extremely popular in China.
One option for delivering video to cellphones is to stream or download
video clips over advanced 2.5G and 3G networks. In China, the influential
Shanghai Media Group has begun trials providing its content to cellphones
with this technology.
Another option is to broadcast video with a technology that works the way
digital radio does. South Korea was the first country to roll out such a
service, in 2005, using satellite and terrestrial versions of a Samsung
Electronics-backed system called Digital Media Broadcasting. As of March,
more than 500,000 handsets outfitted for the service had been sold.
Qualcomm Inc. has launched a proprietary mobile-TV service called
MediaFLO in the U.S. In Europe and Asia, an industry group that includes
Nokia has been touting a standard called DVB-H. More than 50 million
DVB-H phones are expected to be sold globally by 2010, according to
estimates from Research firm Informa.
The planned Chinese standard, which bears the ungainly name
GY/T220.1-2006, could help local telecom providers, such as China Mobile
Ltd. and China Netcom Ltd., by reducing the amount of money they have to
pay in royalty and intellectual-property fees to foreign companies,
according to Sandy Shen, a telecom analyst with Gartner in Shanghai.
But both Nokia and Motorola Inc. of the U.S. said that the announcement
would have little impact on their plans to expand mobile-TV services in
China and the rest of the world.
"It is very natural that China is looking after its own interests in this
area," says Juha Lipiainen, Nokia's Greater China director of mobile-TV
business development.
Motorola called the move "just another proof point that no single
transmission standard will dominate the landscape for mobile TV."
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