I thought I'd take a night course and brush up on my Spanish. I'm doing this because it might come in handy and because TV in Latin America is spicy hot, hugely popular, is in every home, corner bar, bistro, bus, train, car – just name it. And after a slow start, mobile digital TV is about to skyrocket in Latin America and a lot of players will want to be there when it happens.

Just how high? Well, from less than 1/3 of homes at the end of 2012 to almost half by the end 2013 – and 84% by 2018, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. There will be over 100 million digital TV households in Latin America. That’s the entire southern hemisphere full of digital TV addicts!

This is great news for anyone in the mobile digital TV receiver chips and products business – the ones that pop inside or attach to/connect to mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. These same 100 million people who love their TV and quality content like sports, news, soap operas and religious programs, will devour the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics – both of which will ‘consume’ all of LatAm. We won’t even have to market mobile digital TV in LatAm, because soon, everybody across the continent and the world will demand to view these huge sporting events – live on their mobile devices.  

On the flip side, it’s cable operators in LatAm who haven’t been bitten by the DTV bug. They’ve been slow to embrace the benefits of digital TV, and instead of giving praise, they see DTV as a real threat. With 14 million digital cable subscribers on board between now and 2018, what have you got to fear?

It will be win-win and it will be soon. LatAm is primed and ready for digital broadcasting on fixed TVs in the home. That’s fact. High-quality digital content in the home means demanding that same content on mobile devices, tablets, and smartphones. That’s fiction. I predict that MDTV will transform TV viewing forever in Latin America and everywhere on our planet. That’s fate.