Back to that perennial source of interest, mobile video.

Nielsen has just published a consumer insight piece about its growth prospects, itself extracted from a new white paper by its telecoms practice (here, note large PDF file).

The overall message is, as we have reported before, that consumer take-up of mobile video remains low, even where lots of handsets have access to it (note that Nielsen is not talking here about mobile broadcast TV, but the one-to-one 3G variety).Nielsen found that in 2008, the overall use of mobile video in the US stood at just 5% of all subscribers - low compared to other mobile media such as Internet access, ringtones and games. In fact, this is high by international standards, Nielsen reckons, with the UK on only 3%, for instance (see table below).

Figure 1: International Mobile Video Penetration (Q3 2008)

Source: The Nielsen CompanyNB Sweden estimate is Q1 2008, US figure is for subs aged 13+, all other markets 15+

Other notable findings:

• 42% of mobile users in the US access video via a subscription
• The top occasion for mobile video use is ‘while waiting for someone or something’ (59% of mobile video users); followed by ‘while travelling away from home’ (51%); and ‘while at home’ (37%) - a result which has been widely replicated in studies of mobile broadcast TV usage
• Comedy is most popular form of mobile video content today
• In Q3 2008, 54% of mobile video viewers reported average session lengths of 15 minutes-plus
• The typical mobile video viewers tunes into their phone for an average of 3hrs 37mins per month

Note that the last figure equates to just 13 minutes or so per day - given the small user base, not really the basis for a mass-market advertising proposition, as yet, particularly given its fragmentation across different mobile video platforms.Nielsen, while realistic about mobile video’s prospects, believes (like Videonuze) that mobile video could take off in 2009, but only on three conditions:

1. The expanded use of mobile Web and mobile Web video (e.g. You Tube)
2. The rollout of mobile broadcast TV
3. An improved advertising subsidization of subscription-based streaming mobile video services

While agreeing on the first point, Connected TV does not see many indications at present that conditions 2) and 3) are likely to be satisfied to the extent that they will lead to a turnaround any time soon. Mobile broadcast TV seems to be moribund, at least in Europe (but see here re analogue variants), and we have a chicken-and-egg situation with the advertisers. They won’t take it seriously as a medium until it becomes much bigger, but it seems it can’t become much bigger without advertising.