When South Korea plays Togo in its first World Cup 2006 match this month, thousands of Koreans will flock to Seoul's City Hall plaza to watch the football game on huge screens. But a sizeable number at work or on the bus will also be watching the game on much smaller screens - the two-inch ones on their mobile phones.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics, the world's number three mobile phone maker, hopes to replicate this in Germany this month.
As part of a digital mobile broadcasting (DMB) commercial trial, matches will be broadcast on Samsung's SGH-P900 handsets in 12 cities, including Berlin, Munich and Cologne. Samsung hopes the trial will make Europeans associate cutting-edge mobile television technology with its brand, paving the way for another lucrative technology boom.
"We want to create a market and make an early case for mobile TV," says Park Ju-ha, telecommunications vice-president at Samsung Electronics. "Our primary target is not sales volume but to make people understand the benefits of mobile television and adopting it into their daily lives."
Samsung is working with Mobile Fernsehen Deutschland on content, Debitel on sales and T-Systems on networks. The phones will be subsidised, selling for about $200 (€156), compared with a usual price of $500-$700.
"This is the first commercial attempt in Europe at broadcasting TV services through mobile phones, so we have great hopes for this product," says Park. "This device is no bigger than a normal mobile phone so if you can't miss a certain TV programme, you can easily watch it anytime, anywhere." LG, Samsung's smaller Korean rival, is also launching its first DMB handsets in Germany, with its LG-V9000 model. Both companies hope the launch of a free terrestrial service (T-DMB) in Germany will encourage Europeans to trade up their phones.
About eight million mobile television-enabled handsets have been produced, accounting for about 1 per cent of global sales.
Samsung aims to capture a 20 per cent share of this market this year.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)