Is Mobile TV finally hit the U.S. - Let's wait to see numbers on market penetration first!

This week brought a huge announcement from a group of major TV stations at the annual CES in Las Vegas, commonly known as the Open Mobile Video Coalition. The "Coalition's" goal was to showcase and roll out some of the latest streaming TV options for consumers, and detail a snapshot of things to come. As everything in digital moves at light speed in a down market, the price point and entry into market for consumers to try and sample all of the offerings from the OMVC is hard not to try, because the price is FREE. As a way to entice and lure more people into the mobile TV space the coalition has been active in promoting great new devices from major manufacturers like LG Electronics, Kenwood (only mobile TV units in cars), The Harris Corp., Samsung and Delphi.

One of the major companies, LG, said it will offer up to five new products, all that will be capable of getting the standard Mobile DTV signals.

Currently in Asian countries where mobile TV has been active in consumers lives for awhile, the business model revolves from premium paid services to a'la carte and many offering of advertising sponsored content.

With the announcement yesterday it seems a like a solid way to introduce mobile TV, through advertising and sponsored programming, but then other issues come into play that sometimes people do not spend enough time on. The environment for mobile in U.S. cities. With geo-targeted advertising taking shape all over the country, U.S. consumers still are not as heavy users as there European and Asian counterparts, and this is where the environment issues comes into play. I many Asian and European cities transit is healthy, in the U.S., still many people are tied to their cars, which lowers the amounts of time people will spend watching, and which in-turn provides less revenue form advertising.

All n all, yesterday announcement was extremely positive, now we just need to change more of our habits, have better devices, and get ready to welcome one of the next best revenue generators in digital media, Mobile TV and all of the options of interactivity that comes with it.