UTV New Media Ltd., the digital arm of UTV, today announced the launch of India’s first exclusive music video channel named UTV@play on Mobile TV.
This services will provide the Indian music lovers with India’s first exclusive mobile channel where users can access their favorite videos and music with just the click of a button. It would also offer a vast catalog of music videos not only from Bollywood but also from different languages.
This mobile TV channel will showcase music videos in Hindi, English, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bhojpuri and Marathi languages . This facility is now available to the users at a subscription of Rs. 10 per day or at Rs. 30 for the entire month.
UTV@Play is available on Idea, Vodafone, BSNL and MTNL. The users can access it in two ways. They can send a simple SMS. In response to the message, the WAP link is sent to the user, to download the app. They can also directly download the app from the operators WAP portals.
Here are sms instructions:
IDEA – SMS “IDEATV to 55456” or WAP download (IDEA portal)
BSNL – SMS “MYTV to 55447”
MTNL (Mumbai&Delhi) – SMS “SUB to 53388”
Vodafone – SMS “VODAFONETV to 111” WAP download (Vodafone Live)
Music is proved to be the highest consumed content on the mobile.This area however remains uaddressed till now in the mobile TV space which constitutes a mere total subscriber base of 1,00,000 across all channels & operators.
Although other players are merely offering a replica of programming on some other medium, UTV@Play has entered the arena with content specially available to be consumed on Mobile and maximum compatibility to ensure that the need gap is filled.
The low user base for Mobile TV definitely shows that there is tremendous potential for Mobile TV in India, and with 3G coming into the Indian market, there is just no looking back.Although pricing of content needs to be attractive enough to garner a sizeable audience.
In 2007, Accenture and IDC had predicted that the worldwide mobile TV market value would be close to $30 billion and the Indian share would be close to a tenth of that by 2009. Come 2009, the Indian figure is working towards an achievable $360 million. Now this number could change dramatically, not just with the iPhone, but also with Nokia’s new N77 Taiwanese version that supports DVB-H technology. DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld) makes it possible to stream live TV on the move to mobile phones. While Music is a good place to start with mobile content, I think the market will really take off only once DVB-H is launched in India. Imagine cricket, news, TV soaps, reality shows all broadcast live to your mobile phone simultaneously as it is aired on television. And the most important part: Live mobile TV means Live mobile Ads.
Well I dont think mobile tv is a posibility till 3G is launched and promoted well. Its highly technology driven service.