Mobile is the future. Online video is the future. So what happens when you combine the two? Let me put it to you this way; if Superman and Wonder Woman were to conceive an illegitimate lovechild- it would be online video. Fast, powerful and sexy - it's the Brangelina of interactive handset viewing. As traditional TV’s viewership begins to fragment and decline, while broadband connectivity and 4G start to flourish - mobile viewership is going through the roof. By ‘through the roof’ I mean, Pyramid Research  is predicting more than 500 million mobile video subscribers by 2014. So some may say mobile TV is the future, but in my opinion, with SlingPlayer streaming TV directly to your handset and MobiTV already clocking over 7 million subscribers, mobile video is right now.

From Reelseo - Mobile Video Statistics (June 2009)

• Pyramid Research, titled “Mobile Video Services: A Five-Year Global Market Forecast,” mobile video usage will rise at a compound annual growth rate of 28% over the next 5 years. By 2014, more than 500 million users worldwide will subscribe to mobile video services, equal to 8.5% of all mobile subscription services.
• Pyramid estimates that revenue from mobile video services will reach $16 billion by 2014.
• By 2014, Asia/Pacific will represent more than half of all mobile subscribers worldwide, compared to 44% today.  Additionally, China, Chile, and India are said to be markets to watch for future growth as more 3G licenses are awarded.
• Cisco released its Visual Networking Index, which forecasts that mobile traffic will reach over an exabyte per month by 2012-2013. To help put that in perspective, the online web hit the exabyte milestone in 2004, more than 30 years after the first email was sent. However, the mobile web will reach this milestone only 18 years after the first text message was sent.
• YouTube has recently stated that mobile uploads have been soaring over the last six months with over a 1700% increase.

From Nielson - Three Screen Report (August 2009)  

• Mobile video viewing continues its upward trend, with over 15 million Americans reporting watching mobile video in Q2 2009. This is an increase of 70% versus last year — the largest annual growth to date.
• Certain age groups also view online video more than others do — Adults aged 18-24 watch more than 5hrs each month vs. Adults 65+ watching just over 1 hr of online video.

• Short form video (such as YouTube clips) still makes up the lion’s share of online video viewing — 83% in May 09 — while name-brand TV network content comprises the majority of mobile video viewing.

From FierceMobileContent - MobiTV (June 2009)

• Less than four months after its managed mobile television and radio network surpassed the 6 million subscriber mark, MobiTV announced it now boasts more than 7 million subscribers.
• MobiTV - now available on more than 350 handsets across - attributes the latest growth spurt to interest in more interactive mobile broadcast content.

From MVideoMagazine - MRG Research Group (June 2008)

• According to Multimedia Research Group (MRG), the number of mobile video enabled devices will grow from over 240 million TV enabled handsets and over $2.9 billion of infrastructure equipment will be sold from 2007-2011.
• MRG demonstrated that about 13% of people asked in surveys thought mobile video "might take off," while in broadcast services which offer up to 4 times the resolution, around 60% say "We'd buy it," or "It will take off.
• MRG's research predicts that there should be a large upswing in the number of mobile television systems coming online towards the end of the decade. Due to this rapid  increase of the number of systems, the mobile TV enabled handsets will have its highest increase from 2008 to 2009 with more than 250% growth.
• MRG predicts that the number of mobile video subscribers will grow from 21 million subscribers in 2008 to 82 million in 2011.

So those are the latest stats. Go ahead, try streaming a video on your mobile right now. I think you’d be surprised at how easy and fast the process actually is - and be a part of the revolution!