“In the markets where people use this, we have found that viewing tends to be pretty high,” said Diana Jovin, a vice president for corporate marketing and business development at Telegent Systems, the leading mobile TV chip maker, which is based in Sunnyvale, California.

Telegent is shipping about 750,000 chips each month to handset makers, most designed for viewing analog broadcasts in markets like Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Russia, Nigeria, Thailand, Egypt and China. Brazil is one of Telegent’s biggest markets.

In Rio de Janiero, Marcelo Mendonça Guimarães, a 42-year-old taxi driver, said he watched local and national TV news on his mobile handset through his operator, Claro.

“My analog TV phone gives me the opportunity to watch television news while I’m waiting for a fare, or when I am on a break,” Mr. Guimarães said. “I actually have a digital TV in my cab, but I prefer to use the phone. The reception is much better.”

Following a favorite team or soap opera on a cellphone may take longer to reach Western markets, where broadcasters and wireless operators have been slow to embrace the technology. In the United States and Europe, where operators tend to control what technology goes into handsets, a major hurdle to free-to-air broadcasting is, ironically, that it is free.

That offers no incentive to operators focused on raising revenue per customer.

“Ask anybody if they want to watch free TV on their phone. Everybody is going to want to say sure,” said Jim Oehlerking, the senior director for mobile TV business development at Motorola. “The challenge is getting the mobile media marketplace to the point where content owners, carriers and broadcasters work out a business model.”

But with the level of data traffic surging on wireless networks around the world, some operators are beginning to look to free-to-air mobile TV — which operates independently and adds no additional traffic burden on an operator’s network — as a way to retain customers.