Mobile digital television: Coming to a (small) screen near you

Mobile digital television as we’ll come to know it -- live broadcasts, designed for the smaller screen, and most important, free -- is step-by-step getting closer to becoming a reality.

There are a plethora of questions surrounding mobile digital TV. The biggest is simply whether it will succeed, the success of a free ad-based service depending entirely on widespread adoption -- the network TV model gone mobile. Another question is whether it will reshuffle the landscape of existing services, crippling subscription-based models (like Flo TV and Hulu, if it goes down that path, as rumored). 

Mobile digital TV is being promoted by the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), a group of more than 900 local broadcast TV stations. It aims to create a mobile digital TV standard to allow and provide live and on-demand video broadcasts.

The technology would allow wireless devices to pick up over-the-air local TV broadcasts, even when users are on moving trains, cars and buses. Mobile digital TV already exists in test markets such as Chicago and Washington -- and is already popular in Japan and South Korea -- and may soon be coming to a city near you.

Wireless revolution gains steam at Vancouver Games

The one statistic to note coming out of the Vancouver Games is the evolution and maturation of wireless.

As reported by PaidContent.org, the number of mobile page views increased to 87.1 million in Vancouver from 34.7 million at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. The huge increase came despite it being a Winter Olympics, usually far behind the Summer Games in terms of interest.

Additionally, video streams on mobile phones increased to 2 million in Vancouver from 301,000 in Beijing.

It is a strong sign of how powerful a platform mobile has already become and the trend is headed nowhere but up. Every organization without a plan to incorporate wireless into its content strategy should heed those numbers.