Vendors try new spins on DTV for smartphones

If you haven't watched any TV on a smartphone yet, you're not alone. But in one of two separate announcements today, MobiTV is gearing its new Mobi4BIZ on-demand mobile TV service for business rather than entertainment.

With mobile TV still in its early stages, especially in the US, two companies -- Openwave and MobiTV -- today announced offerings aimed at pushing faster adoption of video viewing on wireless smartphones and other untethered small-screen devices.

Openwave's new Passport and OpenMedia services will provide infrastructural underpinnings to service operators, whereas MobiTV's MobiBIZ is geared to innovative mobile video content.

Passport will let mobile service operators sell short-term Internet access options -- such as hour, day, and week passes -- to customers who don't necessarily want to sign up for long-term content access plans, according to a company statement.

From its description, Passport's short-term approach sounds a little bit like the mobile content counterpart of T-Mobile's wireless hotspots, which have long been offering temporary Internet access to laptop PC users in hotels and coffee shops through one-day WiFi passes sold online.

Openwave's OpenMedia, on the other hand, is designed to work with the company's existing OpenWeb service to convert "rich media objects" such as audio-video clips and Microsoft Office documents into a format suited to mobile devices.

Meanwhile, MobiTV has a business market in mind with Mobi4BIZ, a content offering that will initially run on RIM BlackBerry smartphones.

MobiTV also supports a range of different Windows Mobile and Palm devices. Various services are available across AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and multiple other mobile networks, according to information on the company's Web site.

Announced at this week's CTIA show, MobiTV's new Mobi4BIZ vertical niche service will combine live TV with video-on-demand (VoD) and data delivery -- to include, for example, video content and stock market information from CNBC. Bloomberg Television, Fox Business, and TheStreet.com are among other anticipated partners, officials said.

Specific capabilities are expected to include company-specific VoD content; alerts for breaking news video about portfolio companies; detailed financial data about portfolio companies; and financial graphs, analysis, and tools.