Nokia Pilots Indicate User Willingness to Pay for Mobile TV Channels

In three out of four European consumer tests of mobile television, more than half of the users said they'd be willing to pay for TV content on their handhelds, according to pilot results released today by Nokia, whose phones were involved in all four pilots. The sums these participants said they'd pay ranged from 5 euros ($6) a month in Spain up to 10 euros ($12) in Finland. The most popular payment model was a subscription service covering a package of channels, the survey indicates. The results have broad implications for cell-phone carriers, content providers, and payment processors hoping to develop a new market in mobile commerce for premium content beyond music and ring tones. Of the four Nokia pilots, two are still going on. These include one in France, which started in September and is scheduled to end in June, that involves 500 users, and another in Oxford, England, involving 375 participants. Two other tests have ended. One in Helsinki, Finland, ran between March and June last year and embraced 500 consumers. The other, in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, involved 500 users. Better than half of the users in three of the four pilots said they'd be willing to pay for TV on their phones, with the highest positive response coming in the U.K., at 76%. The lone exception was Finland, where only 41% said they'd pay for the content. “The potential commercial benefits of mobile TV for the industry are made clear by these pilots with such a high proportion willing to pay for the service,” Nokia says in a statement about the pilots. Curiously, home viewing was popular in the pilots, with almost half of the French and Spanish users saying they primarily watch at home. The most popular content was news, sports, music, soap operas, and documentaries. All four tests relied on Nokia's 7710 handheld, a so-called smart phone, and on DVB-H technology, which facilitates delivery of up to 50 TV channels to mobile phones with broadcast-quality pictures.