iSuppli, in a March report entitled Mobile Premium Content: Music, Ringtones, Games and Video, forecasts that mobile video-now the smallest of the three categories (tossing ring tones in with music)-will by 2010 be virtually tied with music, currently the largest category at $7.34 billion. In 2006 mobile video will generate $538 million in worldwide sales but will grow to $16.6 billion in four years, a mere $1.2 billion under mobile music sales.

Despite its allure, I probably will not be a customer in the burgeoning mobile video marketplace. And neither will the EE sitting next to me on a plane as I write. I dont always need to be entertained or that connected, he says. Both of us are well down the middle-age path-the ideal demographic for Lipitor and Advil but not for mobile video.

A big technical challenge for software and hardware designers is placing so much content on tiny displays. iSuppli poses a central question: How will a consumer flip through a million songs, 5,000 ring tones, 500 video clips, 100 TV channels and 100 mobile games on a two-inch screen-or a 50-inch screen? Having a handset that has only the display on one side and the buttons on the other will help, says one designer. Another solution is to offer a relative smattering of customized content.

Mobile video is forecast to catch on a bit faster in Asia and Europe than in the United States. China, for instance, will by 2009 have 94 million mobile TV subscribers, influenced in part by the 2008 Olympics, during which visitors will consume snack TV waiting around for transportation, according to the Mobile TV in China Ready to Take Off report from In-Stat (a division of EBs parent company). Mobile video is already popular in South Korea, the only nation where broadcast mobile TV (as opposed to streamed video) is truly up and running, according to Kirstein. Europe should also be getting mobile TV this year.

In the U.S., all the major mobile phone companies, including Verizon, have jumped in. Sprint Nextel was first, in 2004, using MobiTV, which is also supported by Cingular Video. But by 2010, the iSuppli-forecast says the $16.6 billion will be split evenly between North America, Europe and Asia. (Excerpted from an article by John Dodge in Electronic Business Online)