Wireless Content Hype Hides Dark CloudsWireless Content Hype Hides Dark Clouds

The loudest buzz at this year's CTIA Wireless show is, as the organizing trade organization puts it, "Wireless Content Is King." As was the case just before the last wireless bust, though, this claim is little more than the wireless industry whistling past the graveyard.

What's different now is that 3G is becoming a reality and the wireless industry is robustly healthy. But dark clouds are on the horizon for wireless carriers. Will wireless voice-over-IP steal tons of voice minutes from the wireless carriers? Most people, myself included, are guessing it will.

To combat that, wireless carriers are throwing all sorts of revenue-generating ideas against the wall in the hope that something sticks. The most obvious solution is that delivery of branded streaming media will save the day for wireless carriers. The content vendors are fanning the flames, of course and the phone vendors hope content catches on because they'll sell lots of multimedia-ready phones.

As a result, the CTIA trade organization has decreed that Content Is King. But it's increasingly clear to me that not all types of content will be successful. Streaming video won't work, for instance, because it's too pre-packaged and requires users to stop what they're doing to watch on a teensy screen what isn't all that interesting on a big screen.

Live broadcast TV will only work for a subgroup of people, like commuters, who are looking to fill time. Streaming audio, on the other hand, will be huge because it is intrinsically mobile in nature. Hence, the zillions of iPods that have been sold.

What's driving this bit of industry hyperactivity, as I mentioned above, is the very definite threat that wireless operators will lose voice minutes to wireless VoIP. I'll be writing about this topic more extensively in the coming days, but the potential loss of voice minutes has been much more a topic of discussion among analysts and journalists than has been content.

This is a trend that likely will dramatically re-shape the wireless industry over the next few years and how every consumer and enterprise accesses both voice and data services.