There are likely to be over 200 million devices in the market supporting Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL), the proposed industry standard for connecting smartphones and other mobile devices to HDTVs and displays, by the end of this year.
The prediction was made by Judy Chen, president of the MHL consortium, speaking at a briefing organised by Futuresource Consulting in London.
She added that the consortium, consisting of Nokia, Samsung, Silicom Image, Sony and Toshiba, was formed in April 2010 and that the first MHL-enabled device became available in May 2011.
Now many support the standard, while the number of adopters, including such companies as Sharp, LG, Qualcomm, Roku and Dell, stands at over 160 and is growing by one to two a week.
Commenting on the market in general, David Sidebottom, head of digital content, Futuresource Consulting, said that there were already 35 million smartphones in the UK at the end of last year, with the number set to grow to 65 million by 2016.
The number of tablets, on the other hand, will quadruple from 5 million to 20 million in the same period. According to Sidebottom, “consumers can now access content everywhere and the industry has to keep up with consumer expectations.”
Richard Lyndsay-Davies, DG of the Digital TV Group, meanwhile discussed the buzz now surrounding the second screen and wondered what might yet become its ‘Facebook’.
He also pointed out that despite its huge popularity, iPlayer still accounts for only 2% of BBC viewing.
