Soon to appear on a cell phone screen near you: Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote, in all their pay-per-view glory. Or perhaps you'd like to have video games delivered to it, instead? Then again, maybe you'd rather learn something useful with all the free airtime the wireless service providers are giving you. Just step right up to your PocketPC for a video lesson in tuning up a copy machine. All this, and more, is the promise of streaming wireless multimedia as envisioned by the folks at PacketVideo Corp., a San Diego, California, company founded in 1998 by president/CEO James C. Brailean and chairman James Z. Carol. As PacketVideo notes on its Web site, the company's goal is to create what it calls "a new broadcast communications medium--call it cellular TV...call it the two-way wrist communicator...a new way to see the world." BEYOND THE HYPE Go beyond the hype, however, and it's clear that PacketVideo is making strides in delivering streaming multimedia content to wireless devices. For one thing, its technology, based on the industry-standard Motion Pictures Expert Group 4 (MPEG-4) video encoder/decoder, actually works as promised, according to at least one customer (more on this shortly). Secondly, the company has forged a broad-based band of alliances that not only will eventually help it reach potential customers down the road, but provides it financial support until the company can ramp up sales. The list of PacketVideo's technology partners who are also investors--and who have pumped more than dollar 121 million into the company--includes not just wireless device manufacturers, but content providers and semiconductor vendors, all of whom stand to benefit by increased sales of handheld wireless terminals. In fact, Robert Tercek, president of PacketVideo's applications and services unit, claims it is the union of partners that differentiates PacketVideo from its competitors, which include Microsoft Corp.
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