Data from market research and input from consumer experts confirm that an individual TV experience is a key to success – especially with services such as mobile TV. Kurt Sillén, head of Ericsson Mobility World, says that service providers need to allow consumers to choose what to watch, when to watch and how to engage.

“You have to work in a convergent way from day one,” Sillén says.

Ericsson’s end-to-end IPTV middleware is one example of a solution which is unique for its capacity to enable converged services inside and outside the home. It gives operators the flexibility and scalability they need to provide consumers with the complete, differentiated, mobile, interactive, on-demand TV service they have been looking for.

Oran Cassem, head of TV Solutions Sales at Ericsson, says: “For many years, people have been talking about converging the PC, the mobile handset and IPTV. Now this convergence is starting to take place, which is why this solution is so timely.” The solution is the starting point for a whole new consumer experience – what Ericsson calls the Individual Television Experience.

Sillén emphasizes that when operators think about user experience early in the project, the result is more likely to be on time and on budget. “It is important to get early feedback from the market – from real users – about what works and what doesn’t,” he says.

A report from Ericsson ConsumerLab found that the majority of TV viewers (more than 60 percent) were most interested in services that put them in control, such as “start-over” TV, video on demand and network personal video recorders.

Users want similar quality from their TV service, regardless of whether they are viewing it over the web, on a mobile phone or on a TV screen. A Full Service Broadband architecture with an IMS-based TV solution makes it possible to meet these consumer expectations and enable an any-service-on-any-device approach to TV. 

ConsumerLab’s report also found that, on average, consumers are watching mobile TV during both shorter and longer sessions clustered around commuting times and time off from work, school and so on.
 
TV viewing habits are changing, especially for those watching on mobile phones. Jeffrey Cole, head of the US-based Center for the Digital Future, says the notion that TV viewers will only watch short clips of a few minutes on their mobiles is wrong. “Young people today are already watching 30 to 60-minute clips, entire episodes of many TV series. This trend will continue,” he says.