About a year ago, interest in mobile TV was high, especially from those looking for ways to increase their average revenue per unit/user. Now, most of us are still waiting for mobile TV. Yet there have been some interesting shifts in the market and, of course, the standards game is still afoot.

In the United States, the DVB-H recently took a hit when Modeo LLC closed shop and operator Crown Castle International stopped trials. Meanwhile, Hiwire—a DVB-H promoter and the largest owner of the 700MHz spectrum in the United States—is not seen as a "serious operator". MediaFLO, on the other hand, is still supported by deals between Qualcomm Inc, Verizon and AT&T.

The European Commission (EC) has thrown its significant weight behind DVB-H. The EC cites standards fragmentation as a cause for the slow uptake in Europe, comparing penetration South Korea's penetration rate at 10 percent with Italy's at less than one percent. Another reason for EC's impatience is the Olympics next year, which presents an opportunity to find interest among consumers.

With nearly 42 percent of cellphone subscribers worldwide, Asia has been a hotbed of mobile TV trials and services. In South Korea where S-DMB channels have been in broadcast for some time, TU Media Corp. recently launched a dual mobile phone for ground-based and S-DMB services. The company had earlier announced trials for data broadcasting. And the country's Ministry of Information and Communication and the Korean Broadcasting Commission are proposing full digitalization of broadcasts by Dec. 31, 2012.

Qualcomm is busy in Taiwan as well with a MediaFLO trial in Taipei. Public Television Service, a Taiwan terrestrial TV broadcaster, is testing DVB-H broadcasts in northern Taiwan. The test involves three mobile telecom carriers with Motorola and Qisda providing DVB-H handsets. ChungHwa Wideband Best Network, Innoxius Technologies and Gigabyte are also testing DVB-H in Taichung City.

In India, where DMB has earlier been tested, the state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan is beaming eight channels over DVB-H in parts of Delhi. The trial, in collaboration with Nokia, is expected to move to other key cities in about 18 months.

Singapore has selected the Swedish company Kamera as a broadcast partner for its first live DVB-H TV service, TV2GO. Nokia and MiTV in Malaysia have launched a commercial mobile broadcast TV service based on DVB-H. Last year, a similar service started in Vietnam.

While there is no doubt that the news about trials is exciting, the industry still has to deal with the availability of spectrum, suitable content, appropriate broadcaster/operator business models, adequately-priced cellphones and silicon.

At least one of these challenges is being solved by Innoxius. The company is conducting a trial in Taiwan of an adapter that works as a DVB-H repeater for existing Wi-Fi-enabled products.

As an engineer, you would soon need to tune in to mobile TV design. For instance, you would need some embedded programming tricks to ensure handheld TV—and power-supply design skills to allow users to watch TV several times a day without several charging cycles. But it's all going to be worth it if, as the EC expects, the market does reach 500 million viewers and $28 billion.

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