Radioactive: We want our mobile TV

It's coming...

It's going to be bad enough this Christmas with the kids demanding an iPod Mini, new Nikes or Halo 2 without you retorting: "In my day we played battleships on nothing but a scrap of paper." But the Ghost of Christmas Future is taunting us that things will get worse yet. Next Christmas - in 2005 - they'll want a new TV. Not a giant widescreen plasma but one with a miniature TFT that spends most of its time pressed to an ear. This is the mobile TV. And whether you like it or not, it's going to be bugging you for years to come.

Mobile TV has been mooted since the 3G licences were first issued. Promotional videos from the early part of this decade featured time-starved ABC1s catching up with the latest football highlights on their mobiles while quaffing a latte. Was it this goal that encouraged 3 to pay £35m for an exclusive mobile content deal with the FA Premier League back in 2002?

So far, video downloads have not been a great driver of people towards 3's services. Cheap telephony has. And survey after survey shows that not TV but music downloads and gaming top peoples' wish lists of features in their next mobile device.

More recently though, an Ericsson Consumer Lab survey suggested punters are tuning in to the idea of a mobile goggle box. Around 20 per cent surveyed wanted their future handsets to play video clips or actual TV in the phone, and nearly a third wanted larger and clearer colour screens. So despite widespread pooh-poohing by tech commentators, maybe the public does want mobile TV.

Many service providers and vendors think so. With the launch of its 3G services in 13 countries, Vodafone will offer a series of 'Mobisodes' to coincide with series four of the time-obsessed TV thriller 24. Each week, five-minute downloads will feature a unique subplot as an addendum to the series.

All over Europe, Asia and America, video downloads are emerging to financial acclaim. In the US, Sprint PCS is making $2m a month on its two mobile TV services - Sprint TV (downloads) and MobiTV (streaming). In Korea, mobile TV has been credited with the nation's 3G uptake far surpassing Japan's. In fact, 90 per cent of KTF's 3G service revenue comes from video on demand and broadcasting. In Europe, 3 Italy has a 10-minute magazine called 93 Minuto which features the week's best football goals and interviews with player and managers and a live video stream from the house of Big Brother.

Industry analysts like to point out that the cost of servicing mobile TV on the existing GPRS network infrastructure is not cost-productive, and that even 3G networks will struggle to make mobile TV a mass market media. Like the challenge of delivering video-on-demand over the internet, TV over a mobile network gobbles up too much capacity.

A new standard may change that. DVB-H is an addition to the existing DVB standard that is being used by digital satellite, terrestrial and cable broadcasters. DVB-H is broadcast over digital terrestrial television infrastructure - not a mobile network - using IP datacasting at speeds between 128 to 384Kbps. Up to 80 channels could be broadcast simultaneously.

O2 has announced it will trial it DVB-H with NTL and Sony in the Oxford area next year while Qualcomm in the US has said that it will build a $800m nationwide DVB-H network and sell services back to mobile operators. The standards body ETSI has recently ratified DVB-H so expect to see handset vendors march ahead with product development and production scheduling. General services are expected to be launched at the end of next year - just in time for Christmas.

But the operators, vendors and standards bodies are remaining cautious. They believe the public doesn't know what it wants - yet - and maybe they're right. Gaming and music downloading are simple enough concepts but TV on a mobile phone? Seems disingenuous. But that's because most people imagine existing content - a soap opera for instance - reformatted and repurposed for the smaller screen. If that's all we can expect of mobile TV maybe it will slip into obscurity.

However, some very influential people - film and television media giants - want you to watch TV on your mobile. Aggrieved that the only time they can exert control over you is within the home (or cinema), mobile-specific television will extend their influence into the all of your life.

The largest sector of any early adopters in the mobile space is teenagers. They were the first to pick up on SMS, picture messaging and colour screen phones. If mobile TV is to be successful it needs to be sold to them first.

For mobile TV to be successful it also needs unique content that is not only designed for its medium (a phone) but is compelling. Today we frequently see the latest pop stars' tunes released as a ringtone before commercial launch. For Destiny Child's fans, the launch of a new video exclusively on mobile TV before general release will be a must-have. For content owners, it's a new way of generating hype.

The mobile industry is pretty good at getting to know its users, both in terms of understanding how handsets are used or what service design works Better than them, though, are the marketing agencies that advertise products to children and teenagers. These 'creatives' have real imagination and can sell almost anything. No wonder Ericsson has teamed up with BBDO to jointly develop mobile advertising.

Mobile TV will give marketers the most personalised contact point they will have ever known. To subsidise video downloads, streaming and broadcasting, advertising will in all likelihood be needed to compliment any pay-per-view approach.

Marketers will turn their attention first to advertising mobile TV on traditional TV, as well as on billboards, in lads' mags and via viral campaigns. Once the target segment - teenagers - switch on to mobile TV they will be persuaded by advertising on the handsets into nagging parents in to buying their choice of cereal, games platforms and, surprise, surprise, handsets.

So don't think paradigm shift - think box shifting. Next Christmas, all your kids will want for Christmas is a mobile billboard. Pure friction.

Stewart Baines is a freelance journalist and a director of Futurity Media.