Television is starting to reach mobile phones

AN UNDERAPPRECIATED feature of the iPhone, Apple's fancy new handset, is its ability to mesmerise a toddler in her terrible twos long enough for a parent to take an espresso break.

Just call up a YouTube video—tots love the dog on a skateboard—and put the sleek, high-resolution screen on the table. After a few minutes, tap on another clip—of a man dancing in exotic places, say.

The quality of iPhone's video “experience” points the way to what the industry sees as the next step: not just video clips but live television on mobile phones. Except for islands of early adopters, such as South Korea, consumers have so far shown little interest in watching TV on their handsets. Once they see the ease and fun of the iPhone clips, the logic goes, they will want video on their phones too.

IDC, a market-research firm, forecasts that 24m Americans will be watching video on their mobile phones by 2010, up from 7m today. The European Commission estimates that mobile TV will generate global sales of $5 billion-7 billion by 2009.

Many operators already offer some sort of television service and charge for it on the monthly bill. Others think that advertising is the big commercial opportunity, just as it has been on old-style “free-to-air” television. That is why Nielsen, an American firm that monitors television viewership, bought Telephia, a firm which tracks mobile-phone usage, last month.

For the television industry, which is already trying to adjust to viewers who wish to watch not only on their TV screens but also on their computer screens, this means more upheaval.

“We have a three-screen vision,” says Chris Drake, boss of the mobile-business unit of thePlatform, a part of Comcast, America's largest cable company. And so does everybody else.

In May AOL, part of Time Warner, the world's largest media company, even bought a firm named Third Screen Media, which enables advertising on mobile phones.

Giuseppe Zocco, a venture capitalist at Index Ventures, says his research indicates that people watch mobile TV as much at home and in the office as during their commutes. (He has invested in Joost, which lets people view TV on their computers, and Telegent, which makes chips that allow mobile phones to receive terrestrial broadcasts.)