Today, Portable Reportable looks at the future of cell phone broadcasting and consider what will happen when cell phones will be able to received digital TV broadcasts. NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have quite different plans on how consumers will use digital TV. KDDI appears to be planning to allow the handset to receive digiTV and then use the phone’s 3G data connection as the viewer feedback, marketing, and sales channel — similar to how the FM Keitai works now with analog radio and the preinstalled BREW application.
Full program run-time: 5:01Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.

Today’s program closes out a 3-week series of reports looking at the broadcast of media — analog TV and FM radio — to cell phones. In the first program, we looked at the new multimedia phones from Vodafone Japan capable of receiving analog TV signals. Last week, we reviewed the “FM Keitai” sold by 3G cellular carrier KDDI in partnership with Japanese broadcaster Tokyo FM.

The FM Keitai, or FM cell phone, is the world’s most successful example of broadcasting traditional media content to a cell phone — and has been successful at least in part due to the preinstalled BREW application that allows listener feedback, and serves — You guessed it! — as a sales and marketing channel.

Last month, Nikkei Electronics reported that Japan’s public broadcaster, Nippon Hoso Kyokai — or NHK — and five private-sector broadcasters are planning to start broadcasting terrestrial digital signals to cellular phones within fiscal 2005, which means by March 2006. The broadcasters have reached an agreement with the private US company that owns the rights to MPEG encoding technology thus allowing the Japanese broadcasters to use the H.234 MPEG-4 format in exchange for license fee payments. See our video program from NHK’s open-house Here

– Daniel Scuka

Related posts:

1. Multimedia Cellys: FM Keitai Rocks!
2. Japan Launches Digital TV for Mobile Phones
3. Japan’s Mobile Digital Terrestrial TV to Launch April 2006
4. Mobile TV Rocks!
5. Fuel-Cell Mobile Phones for Digital TV

Some sage advise when entering new turf; Stop, Look and Listen.. it’s also good to secure a local guide. Japan is the cradle of mobile civilization – we have been dedicated to this space since 2001 – trust our archives here offer some useful material.

Domestic activities continue to set the pace, and sharp players are looking at global markets. We have hard-earned industry expertise and trusted network of contacts with access to advanced intell. and potential deal flow. Need a lift.. Ok, buckle-up!