Asian Mobile TV Take-Up Good, Profits Small
Analyst company Screen Digest claims there are more than 15 million mobile TV subscribers in Asia but the revenues from the industry are “miserable”, reports RapidTV News. Apparently Japan has 6.5 million users of free mobile TV, which is a far more believable figure than the 30+ million reported by Berg, which seemed to be based on handset availability rather than usage patterns. Screen Digest goes on to say that Sth Korea’s free T-DMB service has 4 million registered users and its pay S-DMB service has about 2.4 million subscribers, which is a boost on the 1.11 million it had at the beginning of this year. Disturbingly, Screen Digest claims that “South Korea
James,
Are you sure that "South Korea’s broadcasters have [only] seen revenues of…$24,000 last year”?
When I was living in Korea, numbers in thousands, millions and billions got confused all the time because of how they count. The largest unit for which they have a name it is 10,000 (because it is also the largest denomination of their currency). Even Koreans get confused among themselves…10,000 won is only 10 dollars!!!
Wouldn't $24,000,000 be small as well? $24,000 revenue seems way too small. Perhaps they meant profit?
Russell
I'm not sure, I'm just going off the report. But you're right — I think I mentally substitute "profit" for "revenue". It can't be revenue because, advertising aside, the S-DMB service is charged for. But it's pretty high for a profit, I'm pretty sure the T-DMB service is still running at a loss. That figure is for 2006, and the services have grown significantly this year. I think you're right that it may be a translation issue.