Will TV on your Phones be Big Business?

Whether you own a Palm Treo, an Ericsson handset, or any other 3G phone capable of streaming video, it seems as if the way forward for cellphones after the advent of the camera is the advent of the television. Analysts are looking forward to this development and seeing the possibility of a brand new service for the mobile phone industry, which is the mobile TV.

The IDC research firm predicts that, in America, there will be around 24 million consumers who will watch TV or videos on their cellphones within the next four years. If the whole idea of mobile TV kicks off, it could add another $1.5 billion in revenue to the mobile market.

The catch: Making people want to get phones that can play videos, and then getting to buy access to the content.

According to analysts, there are three things that have to be considered now: the length of viewing, the content they want to see, and the type of tech that will make the experience enjoyable.

First, the length of viewing helps to determine what kind of programming would best suit the consumers who want to watch mobile television, and there are currently three types of users. “Snackers” are people who use mobile tv to watch quick snippets of action or comedy. “Commuters” are those who usually watch on their way home from work, and therefore eat up the entire travel time with the activity. Lastly, there’s also a subset of people who use the mobile tv at home. On average, most users of mobile tv happen to be the commuter type.

Whether you own a Palm Treo, an Ericsson handset, or any other 3G phone capable of streaming video, it seems as if the way forward for cellphones after the advent of the camera is the advent of the television. Analysts are looking forward to this development and seeing the possibility of a brand new service for the mobile phone industry, which is the mobile TV.

The IDC research firm predicts that, in America, there will be around 24 million consumers who will watch TV or videos on their cellphones within the next four years. If the whole idea of mobile TV kicks off, it could add another $1.5 billion in revenue to the mobile market.

The catch: Making people want to get phones that can play videos, and then getting to buy access to the content.

According to analysts, there are three things that have to be considered now: the length of viewing, the content they want to see, and the type of tech that will make the experience enjoyable.

First, the length of viewing helps to determine what kind of programming would best suit the consumers who want to watch mobile television, and there are currently three types of users. “Snackers” are people who use mobile tv to watch quick snippets of action or comedy. “Commuters” are those who usually watch on their way home from work, and therefore eat up the entire travel time with the activity. Lastly, there’s also a subset of people who use the mobile tv at home. On average, most users of mobile tv happen to be the commuter type.

Second, the type of programming for this format will have to cater both to the type of viewer and the machine being used. There are different ways of doing it, whether the content is streamed or downloaded, longer or shorter, or even broadcast to groups or to individuals. The main difference between regular content and mobile tv will be in the length of the programs. In the case of Fox Mobile Entertainment, the plan is to release 1-minute episodes of a particular show or its mobile spin-off. These “webisodes” have garnered a lot of subscribers, with 2 million downloading webisodes of 24: Conspiracy, a parallel storyline for the Kiefer Sutherland action series.

Lastly, an opportunity also comes in the form of the tech that’s being developed. Providers have to mix and match their offerings with the technology at hand, where screen resolution, picture quality and battery life are affected by the type of phone being used. In addition, they will also have to contend with other devices, such as the iPod and Sony’s PSP system, and market their product properly to entice people with the idea that the all-in-one notion of mobile tv is a better experience than having two separate machines for those purposes.

In any case, the mobile tv business is still young, and there’s still a lot of time before it really gets out there. When tech finally reaches the point where televisions have less quality than the mobile phone, then maybe a deluge of customers will hit phone manufacturers and content providers. ‘Til then, the couch and the HDTV beckon.