A recent survey on the free-to-air analogue mobile TV market predicts that mobile TV viewers on free-to-air analogue handsets will grow by nearly six times across the globe in the next four years.

According to the market analysis of In-Stat and Californian chip maker Telegent Systems, more than 300 million users will watch TV on on free-to-air analogue handsets by 2013, comparing to just 18 million users of today. There will be more than 54 million mobile TV watchers by the year end showing 300% growth. There were estimated to be 13 million mobile TV viewers in 2008.

Weijie Yun, president and CEO of Telegent Systems explained how even basic handsets can be used to access live TV programme on the move.

“The rapid growth of this market segment has been spurred along by a simple chip technology that has become a standard feature in mobile handsets, which provides consumers with access to live TV broadcasts while they are on the move. This is a universal feature that can be implemented in practically any mobile phone, even the most basic handset.”

More than half of the respondents watched mobile TV three times or more a week. One-fifths of the surveyed viewed mobile TV daily however some places had more regular TV viewers, it was revealed.

The study showed that people often watched mobile TV at home or when they were traveling. At work place, they watched during breaks.

Most users liked to watch news and sports while nearly all of them liked variety of programmes.

Jonathan Barzilay, Flo TV’s senior vice president of programming and advertising told the BBC:

“We have seen tremendous spikes in viewing for live news and sport. The Michael Jackson memorial service was the highest watched programming for Flo TV. Prior to that the presidential election was record-setting for us.”

“We continually see huge spikes for sport; for football, basketball, baseball and the like. People clearly want to stay connected even if their lifestyle requires them to be at work, or travelling or on the sidelines of a kids soccer game,”

Frank Dickson, of In-Stat analyst firm commented:

“The adoption of analogue mobile TV handsets has been driven by the most powerful force in the mobile industry: consumers.”

“The infrastructure is already in place, there are no new standards that need to be enacted and the service is free to consumers – a very powerful combination.”