Quotes of the Day

I want my mobile TV. That's the buzz phrase making the rounds at CeBIT, the technology trade show, this week. Just in time for the opening whistle of the World Cup in Germany this summer, mobile-phone operators, handset manufacturers and a host of traditional television broadcasters are preparing to beam sports, music and TV programming to cell phones over wireless networks.

Phone manufacturers Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others are all busy rolling out 3G wireless handsets that are specially designed for viewing video. Network operators like Vodafone and T-Mobile are creating channels, licensing programming and even acquiring their own shows to broadcast over mobile networks. "TV is something everybody understands," says Niek van Veen, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "Operators are interested in TV and video because they are looking for ways to increase the traffic on their 3G networks."

To date, high-speed 3G networks have been offering on-demand video services from news and sports clips to music videos that are streamed to phones — meaning the movie is viewed but not downloaded permanently. But feedback from consumers shows that what people really want is a phone that functions like a tiny TV. That means real broadcast video based on the digital video broadcast handheld standard ( dvb-h) that allows operators to broadcast traditional TV programming to wireless devices.

Not surprisingly, sports broadcasting is a big driver for this service. "The World Cup could be the starting gun for a new era," says Roger Matthews, head of acquiring rights to broadcast sports and entertainment for Vodafone. "Consumers are demanding full-fledged TV, and more and more content owners are interested." So handset manufacturers are unveiling a new generation of devices. Nokia says the mobile-phone industry delivered around 50 million 3G handsets last year. This year Nokia alone expects to deliver 40 million 3G handsets. At CeBIT it is showcasing its upcoming handset, the N92, which looks more like a portable TV than a cell phone. The model supports dvb-h, and users can view live TV on it for up to four hours, or record programs on its 2-B flash memory card. The phone is expected to hit the market in June, overtaking Nokia's current N7710 model, which sells for around $800. Motorola is displaying its recently launched RAZR V3x, which was voted best 3G phone at a trade fair in Barcelona in February. The phone is clamshell shaped and features a 2-megapixel camera, two-way video conferencing and a package of multimedia tools.

Sony Ericsson, the Japanese-Swedish joint venture that has been struggling to catch up with its rivals, also has a new offering. Its W950i Walkman smart phone, an eye-catching slim-line 3G model, has a large screen that can be turned on its side to view video. The phone sports enough flash memory to store 4,000 MP3 files, and is positioning itself to compete with the best Nokia and Motorola phones as well as Apple's iPod.

Mobile TV hasn't yet got its mass market sewn up. Although dvb-h is expected to become the standard in Europe, Germany has yet to agree to award frequency to operators, and it's unlikely that the country's 16 media regulators will do so before the World Cup begins. Even if they do, it doesn't leave handset makers enough time to get TV phones in sufficient numbers to the masses yearning to watch soccer on the fly. "We cannot afford to sleep on this," warned Viviane Reding, E.U. Information Society Commissioner, at CeBIT last week.

But that hasn't stopped the rush to produce phone-ready TV shows. Vodafone, for example, has such licensed programming as Sex and the City and Six Feet Under from hbo. It also has programming from Eurosport and mtv. In Germany, T-Mobile has eight streaming channels, including the daily stream of the popular soap Verliebt in Berlin (In Love in Berlin). mtv has concluded deals with 38 3G operators around the world to broadcast music videos, popular shows like Jackass and shows such as Head and Body, a made-for-mobile cartoon (or "mobisode") about the antics of a head detached from its body. "We want to be on the networks of as many carriers as possible," says Jason Hirschhorn, chief digital officer of mtv Networks. "This is not a fad, not a trend, but something we consider to be a real business in the future, an industry that could be generating $7.5 billion by 2010." 3G may still look like the network nobody needs, but operators hope mobile TV will change all that. Stay tuned for the sequel.

• WILLIAM BOSTON
• Mobile TV is finally with us — at least for sports and music videos