Watch TV on your phone within the year?

Via Keitai Watch, J-Phone is to release a cellphone with a TV tuner that, according to a Sept. 19 Nikkei report, should be out within 2003. J-Phone has declined to confirm whether this is the case, or whether the phone is the commercial version of the NEC prototype that appeared in July (reported on dottocomu). The NEC phone is apparently a W-CDMA model, so this could be J-Phone's first attempt to kick start its as-yet dormant 3G service.

Keitai Watch article in Japanese

[Update] It turns out that there is a late 2002 survey by Hakuhodo, broadcaster TBS, and Matsushita Electric on consumer interest in being able to view terrestrial digital broadcasts on cellphones. The sample was rather small at 120 people between the ages of 20 and 39 living in the Shuto area, but the results show that 86.6% were either somewhat or very interested, and 81.7% were interested in using the interactive functions of digital TV.

This does seem on the one hand like a kneejerk reaction that reflects the populace's chronic TV addiction, but there are some interesting aspects. Most respondents said they would want to watch TV on their cellphone while waiting for or riding a bus or train, while on holiday, or in fast-food restaurants. All this fits with the idea of non-voice cellphone usage as an activity to kill small gaps of time between things. Furthermore, it would mean that cellphone TV usage peaks at times when conventional TV viewing is minimal (around 2% at lunchtime, apparently).

The other standout result from the survey was that the interactive service most respondents wanted to use would be maps to locations introduced in TV programs. The marketing possibilities of this look tremendous in that the viewer is already out and about and doesn't have to deal with the energy-sapping processes of making a note of the address or separating bum from sofa, and is therefore much more likely to head straight for the advertised address if they're interested. Given that Japanese TV already does a decent line in motivating the impressionable to go and queue outside whatever restaurants it is advertising--er, featuring--the results of transposing such tactics to mobile TV could be frightening. I can imagine entire crowds of people being directed by the TVs in their hands.

Watch More TV.

(cue ten-minute brawl over a pair of sunglasses)

(Keitai Watch summary of the survey in Japanese)

Posted by aragoto at September 22, 2003 02:31 PM | TrackBack