One overlooked reason mobile tv may fail

Bill Ray's brilliant Culture matters- why i-mode failed piece in The Register today draws parallels between the mobile tv push and the recent decision by mobile U.K. carrier O2 and Australia's Telstra to drop the e-commerce i-Mode services.

The same services that were, and are, hugely popular in Japan.

Bill believes that the difference in Japan is that because housing is modular and rooms can be moved around from day to day, then the cumulative result is that Japanese children rarely have their own room with a tv and a computer.

With that in place, the phone becomes the tv and computer.

Because this phenomenon is rarely seen in most Western cultures, Bill argues that a case could be made that when Western kids want to watch tv, well, then, they can wait until they get home to do so.

I'd add that the spread of DVRs will further accentuate this point.

So here's a question for adults as well as kids: Why watch "Lost" on your mobile out in the noisy wild when your TiVo or other DVR has recorded it so you can view it when you get back to your lair?

Even if "your lair" means your room or not?