Mobile video continues to grow in popularity and adoption -- but not the subscription model for "mobile TV." In terms of consumer-pays models, one could imagine that movie rental services might have a future on mobile devices. In addition, companies can potentially extend their offerings to mobile (where consumers might be willing to pay a small additional monthly fee for access to the service), although the SlingMedia mobile apps enable consumers to watch their home TV on mobile devices.

What I'm wondering is whether the rumored Hulu iPhone app may effectively be the penultimate nail in the coffiin of paid mobile TV services such as MediaFLO TV, VCast and others.

There are now a range of free, mobile video sites and offerings such as CBS's TV.com, YouTube, Joost, Truveo and a couple of others. The subscription services had an uphill battle to begin with, given that we're in a recession and users don't want to pay additional fees for a generally medicore experience on their mobile handsets.

The proliferation of free video sites will make it that much harder to get subscribers to pay anything for access to mobile video content. Sports and adult content are the possible exceptions.

More TV networks and local stations will also be airing free video. Last week NBC reported:

NBC.com's mobile website served 2.4 million video streams in Q1 2009. That is more than the total number of streams served in all of 2008. And Q1 2009 was the mobile site's highest quarter yet, seeing 24 million page views, a 64 per cent increase over Q4 2008.

While a subscriber-pays model can co-exist with ad-supported mobile video in the context of full-length movies and several other kinds of programming, as it does on cable TV, the market will be dominated by ad-supported offerings -- especially as TV producers and networks try and sell their advertisers reach into mobile as part of their overall proposition. 

The premium mobile TV offerings that require a distinct subscription will likely turn into marginal or highly verticalized or niche offerings -- unless they become part of an upsell to "all you can eat" bundle that includes other incentives.