Will cellular video succeed? Yes

All the debates about whether watching videos on cellular phones will end in a few years. As hundreds of millions of people around the world have camera phones, as screen quality improves and is designed for videos (see left), as airtime costs are decreased and as we find truly useful and/or fun applications, I have no doubt that videos on cellular phones will be as natural as SMS.

Indeed, it might be a lot easier to speak into your handset -- just as we do to for voice calls -- than to use a keypad to send an SMS. We communicate via sounds and images, and videos are a natural extension of the communications process.

However, in the next several years will the successful business model be watching television broadcasts on your handset, transmitting programs you've recorded to your handset for viewing, creating a variety of personal videos that are useful to your situation or just plain video conferencing?

Everything

I realize this is somewhat of a cop out, but given the right set of parameters, all those applications could be successful. The difficult part is figuring out what applications will be successful in specific timeframes.

Nothing about wireless data is easy, except for losing money.

Many wireless experts are examining the business of videos. This is not an undiscovered application -- just the profits are undiscovered!

Check out some expert opinions

You can't go wrong reading Kevin Werbach, Mike Masnick and Russell Beattie. Read Mike's article in The Feature, read Kevin's article in The Feature and read Russell's comments in his Weblog about Kevin's article.

Next month, I will have been analyzing the wireless business for 26 years. Time and time again I've heard people say about a new technology or service: "Why would anybody want to pay for that?!

In many cases, those comments have been correct. Indeed, much of my business as a wireless data consultant is to tell corporate clients, "Not enough people are going to pay for that.

Notable exceptions

But sometimes "that" has referred to color computer screens, hard disk drives, cordless phones, portable music players, cellular phones and, recently, camera phones.

Watching and recording videos on a cellular phone -- a device more than billion people around the world carry on a regular basis -- will be as natural as making voice phone call. The devil, however, is in the details.

Comments

[tychocat]

I have to admit I was initially dubious about the prospects for video played on cellphones. Granting that all the hardware and insfrastructure issues get solved, who in their right minds would want to watch "Ben Hur" or "Gone With The Wind" on a screen the size of a small playing card? Then it occurred to me - that's so old-school thinking. After all, we're talking about wireless connections, we're talking Internet, and the number one use of any new technology appears to be facilitating the watching of porn.

No wide-screen scenery shots, no big sets of buildings blowing up, no special effects - these would all be wasted on a screen sized for cellphones. Instead, close, tight views of the latest starlet to do the Wild Thing in a small room. And utterly personal to the viewer, too - home computers tend to become communal property, but few people share their cellphones. Porn distributors may have their perfect niche - personal, private, and accessible from nearly anywhere.