Video killed the cellular

While mobile multimedia is one of the key mantras arising in the wireless space today, the hurdles facing the companies involved simply getting and video footage onto our handsets are many. And the stakes are high. Without it, one might say, third generation mobile itself would be dead in the water if Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo aren't able to make mobile video viable.

At the heart of the success of a wireless future then, is video streamed to wireless handsets. This in itself is a minor miracle of processing power and networking necromancy. Handsets, in order to capture and display, store and forward either compressed or streamed video will have to have the power of a Cray mainframe squeezed into the size of a fag packet. This is already proving a broadband bugbear for key suppliers like NEC, Matsushita, Sony-Ericsson and Nokia. In one ear they have the mobile operators tugging for bare basic services like voice and SMS to be fully implemented, and in the other the strategy and marketing drones are screaming like hyenas for full broadband to be embedded from day one but still be backwards compatible with existing GSM second generation networks and services.

To say it's a tall order is the understatement of the millennium. Time is ticking on the corporate clocks. Shareholders need their confidence repaying in the form of dividends and predictions show that punters are prepared to pay a penny or three to ogle at Lara Croft while on the move.

Judging by the month or two since Japan's leading operator NTT DoCoMo launched 3G, things are going well. According to one wireless watcher in downtown Tokyo, the hot thing over there these days is sending images and photos to each other. Whether this can be extrapolated out into a)they'd all have streaming video if it was available and cheap, and b)if Japan digs it, so will the Yanks and the Europeans, then we're all onto a wonderful wireless winner and let's go home now and do the gardening.

However, markets and demand cycles, whim and whimsy have proven to be substantially different over the years in mobile. Without cataloguing the idiosyncrasies that could potentially floor the market, a big catalyst is usually needed to spur the public psyche across technological borders.

And luckily, there's one on the horizon. Yes, you've guessed it, the World Cup. Japan and Korea, 3G's birthplace and a leading mass producer of consumer technology, are home to soccer's biggest competition, a party which the world goes bananas for. As China, Russia and the USA are all qualifiers and a England prepares to take on Argentina in the grudge match of the tournament, such a colossal sports event could conceivably kick start the wireless industry.

As the mobile operators queue to own the rights to the video clips, it may just take a few blokes kicking a ball around to accelerate plans to make mobile multimedia and streaming a reality.