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Telegent signals mobile TV rethink  MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT 2009: Wrangling over standards and the release of new digital spectrum have hindered the roll-out of broadcast mobile TV in many countries. But Telegent Systems has sidestepped these issues by focusing on analogue, writes Jonathan Webdale. Mobile television has been slow to take off in most territories, particularly in the case of services that attempt to replicate the linear broadcast TV experience. With the exception of a few countries, such as South Korea and Japan, progress has been hampered by clashes between different interest groups over standards. In the US, chip manufacturer Qualcomm has been pushing its FLO TV technology, securing carriage in a small number of handsets supported by AT&T and Verizon but has never been proud enough about take-up to sing about its numbers.  Meanwhile, in Europe, Nokia has struggled to secure mass adoption for its preferred DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) standard, despite backing from the European Union. Other standards, such as DAB-IP and DMB-T, have also failed to make an impact in the region.California-based semiconductor specialists Telegent Systems, established five years ago, spied an opportunity to avoid the wrangling by focusing on existing technology and other markets. The strategy seems to have paid off. The company, which is backed by venture capital firms including Index Ventures, Northern Light and Walden International, has shipped 20 million mobile TV chips since debuting them in spring of 2007. So what makes Telegent different? "We're the only company that enables the reception of analogue mobile TV on handsets," explains Telegent VP of corporate marketing Diana Jovin (above). "Originally, the industry branched off into all these different digital standards because they believed it was not possible to get analogue into mobile devices with good picture quality, but we were able to solve that technical challenge." Telegent has been working with mobile phone manufacturers, primarily in China, Taiwan and South Korea. Its chips are now embedded in over 50 handsets that are reaching consumers in these areas, plus the Middle East, Latin America, Northern Africa and Southern Europe. "In particular these devices are popular in the emerging markets and the growth in adoption has been phenomenal. It's rapidly outpaced what we've seen in the subscription digital side of the business, largely because of the contrast between getting the free content you see on your TV sets at home versus having to pay for a new content line-up that you may not be familiar with," says Jovin. Telegent anticipates shipping an additional 25 million receivers (below) this year, meaning the total number of analogue TV-enabled handsets will eclipse that of devices with digital receivers installed. Jovin points out that in contrast to digital, the analogue infrastructure is everywhere and has been built out over 60 years. While some countries are in the midst of switching to digital, analogue transmissions are set to continue elsewhere for many years to come.  "Even if you look out to 2012, still more than 88% of the global population will have access to analogue broadcast, so we're talking about a transition that's going to take place over a long period of time. This is a technology that will provide the majority of consumers in the world the ability to receive mobile TV services while that's happening," she says.But Telegent is also branching out into the delivery of hybrid digital and analogue mobile TV chips so that it can handle the transitional process. The initial emphasis on analogue isn't just about the technology, however, it's also about the programming that's available. "The digital networks don't have rights to the same content that's delivered over the air to the analogue broadcast infrastructure. If you're offering a DVB-H service you have to either license the content or create your own content, so ultimately what you'll be giving the consumer is different programming from what they're used to seeing on the their conventional TV set at home." Jovin believes that this is a key factor. While the debate about mobile TV often pitches between what sort of content consumers want on their devices to whether it's the right device to watch video on at all, Jovin claims its users are tuning into the same shows they would watch when in their living room, and at the same times too. This is particularly the case in countries where the number of mobile phones sometimes outstrips the number of TV sets. For these reasons Telegent earlier this year moved into the low-cost PC notebook market, launching a hybrid TV receiver chip specifically catering to this and delivering a combination of analogue and DVB-T - the standard common to established digital terrestrial TV transmission. "If you have a PC that's not connected to the internet you can receive TV the same as you can as if you were," says Jovin. Jonathan Webdale 22 Apr 2009 © C21 Media 2009 
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