A piece of news that emerged about Blockbuster courting mobile handset makers to make movies available strikes me as wrong-headed. And note this is from someone who's sometimes been accused of being insufficiently critical of even the most new-fangled video delivery concepts.

However, this idea stretches the mind too far. Watching a 2 hour movie on a mobile handset's tiny screen. How many people are going to be willing to do that? And to run their battery down for this pleasure? Not many is my guess. Not to mention that mobile content is all about short-form, bite-sized chunks. You know - you find yourselves with 5-10 minutes of downtime waiting for your plane, your kid or your coffee. So watch some news or sports clips. But a whole movie? Forget it.

These days people are so enthusiastic about broadband and mobile as opening up new market opportunities that they often focus too quickly on the technology-based, "Cool, we can really do this?" question, instead of the consumer-based, "Is there really a need to be filled?" question. My bet is that more of the latter and less of the former will lead to success. Hopefully Blockbuster will realize this soon and not waste too many cycles on this idea.