Mobile video to take off by 2009

Though it still has hurdles to clear, video on mobile phones will earn operators billions, according to analyst house Infonetics.

Challenges to overcome include the availability of handsets with low power consumption which are easy to use and reasonably priced. Also needed are the right content and services to inspire people to sign up.

Those may sound like a tall order but Infonetics analyst Jeff Heynen said these challenges should be resolved "quickly" - and so make way for a mobile video boom.

The final piece is the network, which mobile operators are already upgrading to increase bandwidth with technologies such as HSDPA, says Infonetics.

Sports will be one type of content mobile users will be willing to pay for, according to the analyst.

World Cup matches and clips streamed to mobiles proved popular during the 2006 tournament and earned the mobile industry as much as $300m by some estimates.

Within three years, Infonetics predicts, revenue from mobile video services worldwide will hit $5.6bn, up from $46.2m in 2005.

It also expects the number of mobile video handsets to total 336 million in 2009 compared to just 28 million in 2005.