Video mass market closer to cell phones

David Johnson April 15th, 2008

Here’s a little LATimes story with a Vegas dateline for all you NABbers:

With 89% of U.S. adults signed up for cellphone service, carriers are trying to boost revenue by getting customers to receive more data on their phones — and nothing contains as much data as video.

The big carriers have done little to promote video, in part because most handsets can’t show moving pictures.

But that may change soon, industry executives said. Sales of video subscription services jumped to $308 million in the last quarter of 2007 from $112 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen Mobile.

Meanwhile, BusinessWeek has an article saying service providers are losing their grip on selling content over mobile phones as the mobile web takes off. The service providers are not so worried, since their core business is providing access and that is not going down anytime soon. But, just as we LostRemoters keep thumping the get-on-the-mobile-bandwagon bible, we also know that cell phone bandwidth and service in the U.S. is pathetic compared to overseas markets.