Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 203

While the media has recently been afire with post-World Cup stories of mobile TV's performance and whether all the hype was worth it, the best post-World Cup story has to be that of the three Argentinian fans who were ejected from a ground for pretending to be disabled.

The fans had bought wheelchairs and then bought special discounted tickets for disabled fans to gain admission. Anyway, guess what? They got rumbled. How? Yep, for jumping up and down when their team scored...maybe not the Hand of God, more like the Foot of God?

Or to quote one of these three stooges: "Our friend couldn't stop jumping and a person near us thought there was a miracle happening." Funny that, I had the same feeling when I finally managed to make mobile TV work on my handset.

And it would appear my experience is far from unusual. A recent survey on mobile TV in the UK from Strategy Analytics has found that mobile TV isn't doing its thing. In its round-up, the report begrudingly gives Vodafone top spot but there isn't much opposition. Orange even returned null points because of 'technical difficulties'.

The problem here is, as ever, expectation. WAP suffered for years because it was billed as a functioning mobile internet when it was rubbish and it's only now delivering on its promises. I watch mobile TV but it's not easy. No handset seems to come with a stand so I constantly have my head down and not looking up. It's like having sex with somebody who has bad breath.... or listening to panels at trade shows.

Watching mobile TV is never going to be the same as watching the bigger screen, but it has a definite future and it would be a mistake to write it off because operators aren't delivering as the marketing promises. It's not as if people are likely to be more still in the future, we will be forever more mobile.

So, emerging mobile TV channels that don't just replicate Sky News or ITN will move things forward and everybody will live happily ever after. So watch out for World Cup 2010 when mobile TV will REALLY break through... unlike those three Argentinians who are probably already cobbling together another daft plan to watch their skilful, yet churlish, little team.