MUMBAI: China will begin trial broadcasts of mobile television by mid-2007.

The digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) technology will be tested next year and a satellite system will be activated in the first half of 2008 so that the Olympic Games can be broadcast to mobile-phone users across the country, China Daily reports.

The country’s two biggest mobile telecom operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, are expected to sign agreements with phone makers by the end of the month to buy TV handsets.

Besides mobile phones, big-screen personal digital assistants (PDAs) and MP4 players will also be able to receive TV signals, Yang Qinghua, director of the television division of the SARFT's Broadcast Science Research Institute, was quoted in the report as saying.

The mobile-phone TV market in China is estimated to reach $756 million by 2008. China is the world's biggest mobile phone market with 426 million mobile phone users and in the next five years, about eight per cent of them are expected to subscribe to the mobile TV service, the Chinese government estimates.