WSJ -- Reality : TV by Cellphone ........................................
March 10, 2005
Reality: TV by Cellphone
By DONNA FUSCALDO
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Snapping pictures and surfing the Internet soon won't be the only things your cellphone can do.
Next up: watching your favorite TV sitcom on your cellphone and even using the handset to record the show.
A host of telecommunications and semiconductor companies are racing to bring TV, video conferencing and video recording to mobile phones. Their efforts are being driven by advances in technology that allow chip makers to cram more functions on a single semiconductor.
That means phones with greater processing power, longer battery life and a clearer picture. Some see hand-sets acting as TiVo-like devices, recording and storing content, as more hard drives find their way into cellphones.
Of course, many callers can send pictures and video over cellphones today, with options available especially in Asia. Even in the U.S., Verizon Communications Inc.'s VCast service, for instance, allows cellphone users to download five-minute videos. But industry experts say that is only scratching the surface of what cellphones can do with video, particularly in terms of TV programming.
"People are really looking at entertainment in very broad ways," said Peter Skarzynski, a senior vice president at Samsung Electronics Co.'s Samsung Telecommunications America. "It's just not going home and sitting in front of your TV. It's TV on the go."
Samsung is testing a handset that will deliver satellite-TV signals to cellphone subscribers and another that delivers terrestrial-TV services to mobile subscribers. Both models are scheduled to go on the market in South Korea in April. Also under development: a handset with a TV tuner built in, giving access to channels without the user's having to subscribe.
In Samsung's home country, South Korea, it and other manufacturers joined with broadcasters to create a new technology for delivering video signals to mobile phones. The technology allows signals to be picked up by cellphones while traveling in cars, trains and other vehicles, overcoming the handicap of ordinary TV signals that were hard to hold at high speeds with small antennas.
For TV phones to make a big splash in the U.S., technical and logistical barriers have to be overcome. Among them: the U.S. industry hasn't agreed on a common standard for bringing the content to the cellphones or how much to charge. Because of such obstacles, TV cellphones won't hit U.S. store shelves until 2007, industry watchers say.
According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, TV cellphones will make up 1.8% of the world-wide handset market in 2007. That is expected to increase to 5% by 2009. "I don't think users are crying out for it yet. I think manufacturers and developers are saying, 'Yeah, we can do this,' " said Stuart Robinson, an analyst at Strategy Analytics.
Even with the uncertain demand, companies such as Texas Instruments Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and Philips Electronics NV all have entered the TV-cellphone market. "TV is the most popular consumer application, and cellphones are the most popular telecommunication application. Marrying the two of them will be a recipe for success," said Remi El-Ouazzane, a business manager for TI's Mobile Connectivity Solutions group.
In late October, TI introduced a mobile semiconductor, fittingly called Hollywood, that can capture broadcast signals and send the content to a cellphone. Unlike household TV sets, TI's TV-enabled hand-held sets would require a new digital broadcast signal that can be picked up while the cellphone is moving.
In addition to getting news, sports and TV shows, TI sees the cellphone recording content from the TV to be viewed on the phone or vice versa. The Dallas chip maker says its technology will ensure cellphone picture quality similar to what is seen on TV.
Qualcomm is taking a drastically different approach when it comes to bringing TV to cellphones. The San Diego company is investing $800 million to build high-powered broadcasting towers that can blanket a city, beaming real-time content to cellphones. Qualcomm, which bought its own radio-spectrum space for the service, said the towers will be able to send out content at a higher rate than the existing data networks because its towers won't be competing with data traffic. The company hopes to begin deploying the towers by 2006.
For now, Qualcomm is testing a service in Asia in which users can download short video clips. The company is convinced TV will be a big hit with consumers. "The reason I think it will work is it's worked in other places in the world," said Paul E. Jacobs, named this week as Qualcomm's chief executive.
Philips last month announced a chip that lets cellphone users watch TV, make video calls and listen to music, and eventually record video for lengthy periods.
"There's been a taste of a lot of this technology already on the market in the form of video, imaging, gaming and audio," said Charles MacFarlane, a technical marketing manager at Philips. "The biggest 'wow' factor is one chip can do all the different technologies."
--Evan Ramstad contributed to this article.
Write to Donna Fuscaldo at donna.fuscaldo@dowjones.com
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