August 22rd 2008

Watch Olympics Via Mobile Phone   
      ---On Mobile TV standard competition

Before the Beijing Olympics opened, China Mobile proposed customized requirements on CMMB embedded TD Digital TV mobile phones to the terminal providers. Within one month, Lenovo and Spreadtrum delivered the first set of TD Digital mobile phones to China Mobile while Yulong, ZTE, and Newpost respectively turned over a certain quantity of TD Digital TV mobile phones, which realized the slogan of “Watching Olympics Via Mobile”.

Whoever holds the standards first will dominate the market. As no network trials have been made to TMMB and no networks were constructed, SARFT has been methodically promoting the network and service coverage of CMMB. SARFT, starting testing the CMMB network from the latter half of 2007, has completed the CMMB network construction with fairly good effects in 37 cities including the Olympic cities, among which several cities have up to 90% CMMB coverage. Meanwhile, CMMB has relatively clear service patterns including TV broadcasting, vocal broadcasting, data transmission (such as stock and local information), E-service directory and emergent broadcasting. Comprehensively, CMMB services enjoy more mature development and high marketization than TMMB, for which CMMB is chosen by the relative departments to serve the Olympics.

However, these TD Digital TV mobile phones chosen by China Mobile to serve the Olympics are kept off the mass market, which is unlikely to affect the market situation of mobile TV phones in the future. Though the Olympic-oriented phones adopted CMMB standards, TMMB is still competitive so that the competition of mobile TV standards still exists which will bring some uncertainty to the development of mobile TV. The best service pattern for mobile TV is being jointly supported and promoted by content provider such as SARFT and channel venders such as Telecom Operators, which requires the support from the national policies and a certain period of time to balance the profits of different departments.