Always trendsetters, carriers in Japan and South Korea have upped the anti on their search for satellites to broadcast TV and even digital music content to mobile devices. A few European mobile operators and manufacturers have just begun trials of the technology, North America is next.

Mobile TV has the potential to become a success in the non-voice segment. Indeed, the ability to watch movie trailers, news, sport and TV show clips is seen as one of the main offerings and differentiators of the 3G networks that European mobile operators spent billions of Euro on. It is true that 3G operators hold a first-mover advantage in providing TV content, but ‘real’ mobile TV will come into its own with digital, multicast technology, which offers higher quality at a lower cost.

Samsung and Nokia are among those handset manufacturers that have announced phones that will be able to handle digital TV signals, and both are expected to be on the market in 2005. One of which is Nokia’s N92 handset, it was just revealed this week and uses the DVB-H mobile TV standard.

The devices with built-in digital TV receivers promise an additional boost to the already teeming handset demand. In fact, initial projections claim that there could be up to 270 million subscribers worldwide with TV functionality on their mobile phones by 2009. Let’s just hope there is something good to watch.