Live mobile video, interoperable across different phones and carriers, could be a force for major changes in the way we experience the Web and the world. It could be one of Apple's most important contributions to the future.

Analyst Alfred Poor estimates in research released today from GigaOm Pro that approximately 3.2 million consumers will have access to mobile video chat in 2010. Poor believes that number will grow almost 50-fold in the next five years, to an estimated 142 million consumers. "The first few years of the market will see fairly small numbers with the main adoptees being early adopters," he writes, "but by 2012 the market will reach beyond the enthusiast audience to a more mainstream audience, and we'll see adoption rates similar to that of SMS and other messaging formats as illustrated in the middle of the last decade."

"The power of video communications," Poor argues, "lies in the ability of the participants to detect subtle emotional nuances during conversations." (Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015 Subscription required.)

Video communication isn't just about experiencing face-to-face-style interactions remotely, though. It has the potential to enable new forms of cultural experience all together.

As Jake Dunagan and Mike Liebhold wrote in a Skype-sponsored report by the Institute for the Future last fall:

"We've seen throughout history that each new medium comes with its own possibilities and limitations, impacting individuals and the social order in profound ways. The printing press democratized communication and made a literate (and revolutionary) civil society possible. Ubiquitous and accessible communication applications are now allowing more people to join the growing global symphony of text, voice, and video conversations, with vibrant new cultures and practices emerging. We all have the potential to use video-enabled networked devices to communicate in modes and manners we never have before. As Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine wrote, we are witnessing the birth of a new culture around video communication - we are in the midst of becoming 'people of the screen.'"

The Future of Real-Time Video Communication (PDF)

Barriers to the Future

Live mobile video consumption, creation and chat and calling have been held back by a number of factors. Mobile computer processing power has been a big limitation and the iPhone 4's ability to pull it off pushes the envelope. This is presumably a substantial part of why the iPhone 4's FaceTime implementation is only able to call other iPhone 4s at launch. (Note that Nokia phones have supported video conferencing for years, though.)

Bandwidth is another major limitation, and one that Apple is avoiding for now by limiting FaceTime calls to Wi-Fi connections. Jobs said today that the feature is limited to Wi-Fi in 2010, but the company is "working with the cellular providers to get things ready." Note the use of the word providers, plural.

Cries for more and cheaper bandwidth, and more efficient ways to use what is available, will be a defining issue for the near-term future of software development, tech political policy and user experience. See Stacey Higginbotham's excellent write-up of AT&T's new 3G data cap last week for more details.

Interoperability has been another major challenge. Mobile phone users can make voice calls across networks (AT&T to Sprint, for example) and email users can email across networks, but mobile video calling across networks still requires a technical standard that is agreed upon and implemented widely.

That's what Apple aims to do with the introduction of FaceTime. The awkwardly named protocol could be implemented by all major handset manufacturers so that consumers could perform video calls as easily as we perform voice calls today.

Will other companies adopt Apple's proposed standard? If Apple maintains its dominance in desirable markets, they may.

Cross-network calling would make the market explode, as long as carriers can build out capacity fast enough. Unfortunately, there is some doubt that all parties will see big increases in consumer use of their products as a good thing. Some carriers are liable to prefer less use for more pay, and if they can spit in your eye as part of the deal - all the better.

Nothing can be taken for granted, but if Apple can help advance a cross-network standard for real-time mobile video communication - that could become one of the company's most important contributions to the world.

The new chat functionality will work on PCs with Windows XP or Vista, as well as on Macs with OS X 10.4 or later. The plugin will work with all the major browsers, including Google's own Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.

We have not been able to test the video and voice quality of these chats yet, but we will update this post once we get a chance to try it out for ourselves.

Skype?

Interestingly, Google Talk, Google's desktop chat program does not have any video functionality yet, though Google enabled voice chat for Google Talk a long time ago. By adding voice and video chat, Google is clearly going up against Skype, which has made video chat one of its main features in the latest version of its software.

The clunky launch of Yahoo! Live last week has a lot of people talking about live video online. There's a long list of services that you can use to do web based public broadcast of live video, but those services aren't what you'd use for small group, private sessions. Forrester explained the landscape well in a report last year, "Legacy videoconference systems of all types have failed to live up to their promise because of technical complexity and user interface issues." The tech problems are being solved and a free, cross platform solution with recording is great - but interface issues remain.

There were lots of little issues that I and the people I chatted with experienced, including substantial interface confusion, occasional pixelation of international participants, file transfer/path strangeness and some people reported undesirable CPU demands.

That said, Oovoo is a service that immediately demonstrates its usefulness when you get a group of people on that have something to say. It's got a very Skype-on Windows type of interface, it's got a good feature set and the video/audio quality is generally very good.

The fact that Oovoo requires download of a desktop client seems like a drawback for very casual users. In almost any case where I am looking to do a quick multiperson video chat I will refer people to MeBeam and maybe Tokbox - both very easy to use web apps. There are a lot of options.

If I am going to do regular private chats and want to record, do file transfer, etc. then I may set up Oovoo with a group of people. People comfortable with trying out new web apps, and comfortable with video conferencing, probably don't have much need for Oovoo except for the recording feature which right now is Windows only. If you're working with people who don't feel as comfortable in that world though - then this high quality, more formal desktop service may treat you well. In those kinds of circumstances the fact that it's both Windows and Mac friendly will be much appreciated.