In July 2005, ABI Research estimated the mobile video market to grow to 250 million viewers with $27 billion in revenues by the year 2010. Not surprisingly, the Silicon Valley in the past six months has spawned many start-ups jumping in to catch the trend.

The TiE Wireless “Cellvision—Ready or not here it comes!” presented a start-studded panel to discuss the future of mobile video. The session moderator Ujjal Kohli’s questions on the future and the potential of the industry drew interesting responses.
“A new medium combined with portability is a winning media,” claimed Doug Garland, Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Mobile. The progression of mass media to digital media to My Media is the future, he said.

The recent flurry of mobile media initiatives, such as ‘24’ on Vodafone, ‘Vcast’ by Verizon, where one can watch Shakira’s music album anywhere and ‘Looney Tunes,’ by Sprint only affirms the growth potential of the market. Conservatives who preferred to see results and mavericks who see great potential divided the panel.

Rei Choi, Senior Director, SK Telecom International, said “We have to think about the cost of delivery for carriers.” While Bill Stone, VP Mobile Media Strategy, Verizon Wireless remained optimistic, “Opportunity in bringing services together in a seamless way wins.”

The panel discussed various issues that would plague the growing sector. Digital rights management, advertising on phones and privacy were identified as some hot button issues. As the panel discussed navigation issues with MobiTV, Allan Thygesen, Managing Director, Carlyle Group felt it was not navigation, but made for mobile content to be one of the pain points to ache the industry.

Discussing the killer content for mobile, the panel debated on live TV and Video-On-Demand. While panel was divided in its outlook, they all agreed music, sports and comedy will dominate MobiTV. They also agreed on byte-sized chunks of information briefs such as movie and song bits, news and weather alerts to play a major role in shaping the future of this space.

In the end as Garland said, the success of internet is proven, the demand for mobile phones have increased from 6 million to 180 million, and all takes is one creative solution to steer the mobile content into the future.