Om Malik has a great entry on the mobile industry not getting the consumer.
"RBC Capital Markets at its Mobility Evolution Conference in New York conducted an informal poll of 100 mobility experts, and found out that nearly 63% of those polled believed that consumers want to watch TV/movies on their mobile phones, while a whopping 72% believed that consumers would tolerate advertising on their cell phones.
This is the polar opposite of the findings of another RBC Capital Markets survey of 1,001 consumers released earlier this week. Only 23% of consumers expressed an interest in watching TV or Movies on their mobile phones. Only 20% of consumers said they would tolerate advertising, if an only if it lowered their costs.This is proof that consumers don’t care too much beyond - affordable and cheap voice plans, and simplicity."
Living in the Seattle area, which is looking like the next epicenter of mobile content (InfoSpace, MSN and Google etc.) , I don’t see mobile content being big on this generation of phones but disagree that consumers don't care about extra features - they just don't see them yet.
I think this will need to be revisited in a few years, when more powerful phones continue rolling out. I doubt many people even considered watching movies on their computers a few years ago, before DVD and streaming became tolerable.