AN INTERESTING twist to the battle over mobile TV has emerged as specialist chip supplier, Telegent, claims to have interested the world's Top Five handset vendors in its wares.

Telegent's offering is quite simple. It produces chips which enable mobile handset users to watch regular broadcast TV channels on their phones. Unlike rival standards such as DVB-H, there's no need to re-engineer the content. It receives straightforward analogue TV signals.

The problem with mobile TV is a big mismatch between what mobile operators want to provide and what consumers are prepared to pay for.

What the punters would really like to do is watch their favourite Soaps on their phones. By contrast the mobile operators seem obsessed with making mobile TV interactive so that it generates additional data revenues.

While these battles rage, Telegent has been quietly shipping its analogue TV chips and claims to have passed 5 million unit sales by Q1 2008. Telegent CEO, Yun Weijie, told the FT that he expects to ship a further 25 million units by Q1 2009.

These handsets are going into markets such as the Middle East, Latin America and China were the locals are less concerned about the latest digital standards and more interested in watching TV anytime, anywhere.

One study found that the most popular place to watch mobile TV in the home was actually the toilet. How convenient.

Yun revealed that Telegent chips are going inside phones provided by Chinese manufacturers such as ZTE and Shanghai Tianyu Technology.

This is posing a big threat to the handset market leaders who see the world's next billion handsets being sold into emerging markets and don't want to be left out.

Hence, as Yun claims, his company is now talking to the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The big question mark lies over whether these chips will be built into handsets sold in European and North American markets.

How will operators in these regions react to phones that provide TV for free when they are desperately trying to peddle paid-for TV based on technologies like Mediaflo and DVB-H?

The situation will be even more complicated in markets like the UK where the operators subsidise the handsets [and state-controlled TV is paid for by a License Fee - Sub Ed]. So they'd be paying for handsets that compete against their own data services. Not good. µ

L'Inq
FT