After the large investments made in 2006, one of the four biggest Italian mobile operators (TIM) has decided to stop its mobile TV services (based on Dvb-h technology) due to the limited penetration that these have experienced over the Italian market. Rumors reported by the Italian newspaper Repubblica, indicate that also Vodafone Italia is contemplating a similar decision and that investments on Mobile TV are no longer a priority. Discontinuing Mobile TV channels will free spectrum bands that TIM is planning to use for mobile broadband services (which penetration is exponentially increasing in Italy).
The reasons for such a flop could be quite a few. On one hand, the offered services were not very innovative: basically the operators were just offering for mobile devices the same channels and programs available over traditional TV, without adding any ad-hoc and new content. Then, the rapid diffusion of mobile internet has provided to mobile users many new services (such as on-demand video) that have potentially cannibalized the sales of Mobile TV. On top of that (this is just my opinion) there is a price / value problem: would you be really willing to pay 10 euro per month or so, in order to watch TV on a 2 inch screen?
What do you think?
And what do you think will happen in the rest of Europe?
