Want your MTV?

Do you want your MTV? By "MTV," of course, I mean TV on mobile handsets. (Don't want to draw the ire of Von Dutch-clad VJs and other people from "The Real World" for trading on the name of the ubiquitous music network.)

Mobile TV might seem to some like the pinnacle of our society's growing attention deficit disorder problem. Yet it's just one of the video services we are likely to see more of in the future as handsets armed with enhanced video and audio technology come to market.

Mark Frankel, director of product management at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, even thinks that the micro-hard drive technology necessary to support a mobile Tivo-like service might be feasible sometime in 2006. Frankel hedges no bets on the timing and commercial viability of mobile TV or mobile Tivo services, but based on early success of mobile TV services in Asian markets, it might not be unrealistic to view the mobile phone as the next universal remote. And, by the way, that could be a pretty good thing for the mobile industry.

E-mail me at doshea@primediabusiness.com.