10 mobile trends: Should you care?

7. Mobile TV

While currently broadcast mobile TV is in its infancy and industry watchers are wondering whether, when and if it'll ever enter mainstream use, some future gazers are already considering if there might be any applications for business.

One suggestion is businesses might be able to use it as a sales channel - corporates would be able to broadcast their own marketing material to the public. The other point of interest for CIOs is slightly more plebeian - if all corporate phone users in the future are carrying devices that are capable of showing must-watch shows, will there be an impact on worker productivity?

And, for that matter, on cost. What corporate mobile buyer will want to spend budget on unnecessary functionality? It's this thinking that has largely seen cameras absent from most enterprise-focused smart phones until recent times and will be likely to see the same logic applied to mobile television.

Ten mobile trends

1. FMC
2. Salesforce automation
3. VoIP
4. Payments
5. 3.5G - HSDPA
6. Location-based services
7. TV
8. Device management
9. M2M
10. Antivirus

Jim Morrish, from mobile market watchers Analysys, told silicon.com: "I can see the functionality for handling an equivalent of video-podcasts being implemented as standard very soon. However, actual broadcast mobile TV may not be implemented as standard until some way down the line. Initially it is likely that 'business phones' will remain business focused… however, as - or if - the technology evolves to the point where mobile TV functionality is implemented on standard mobile telephony chipsets, then economies of scale will result in business devices using the new integrated chipsets, and so having a mobile TV functionality."

The technological impact of mobile TV is likely to be minimal therefore for most organisations - although questions of productivity and appropriate use of data bundles may yet cause CIOs to take a second look at their usage policies for corporate kit.

RATING: 1/5 - of outside interest to the suits.