Nokia, Motorola to Co-operate on Mobile TV

Mobile phone and network makers Nokia and Motorola have agreed to work together to allow users to see television broadcasts through their mobile phones, the companies said on Monday.

The deal aims to let the companies’ customers see television programmes broadcast through each other’s networks. “Operators around the world are evaluating broadcast mobile TV as a compelling new service to offer their subscribers - and interoperability will play a key role in bringing these services to market faster,” Rob Bero, Director of Broadcast Technologies at Motorola, said in a statement. Nokia and Motorola, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 phone makers, plan to use DVB-H technology (digital video broadcast - handheld). More than 50 million DVB-H phones are expected to be sold globally by 2010, Nokia said in a statement, citing research firm Informa.

DVB-H is an agreed standard for mobile television, but the way content is protected against piracy can differ between DVB-H networks. Mobile operators hope that additional income from mobile TV services, which may generate another 5 to 10 euros of revenues a month, will compensate for declining revenues from voice telephony due to fierce competition and new regulation. DVB-H competes with two other mobile TV formats called DMB and MediaFlo. Nokia and Motorola are also working together on promoting open standards for mobile TV in the Mobile DTV Alliance, along with likes of Intel, Microsoft and Texas Instruments.

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The two companies together sell more than 55 percent of all the mobile phones in the world and they are also large manufacturers of the networks for mobile communications.