It's a welcome development, when a market leader decides its time to pay attention to wireless/mobile media delivery.

At the Media Marketing Show, this week, MBC Group announced its vision for expansion into new media platforms.

According to the announcement "The vision seeks to leverage the group's success in delivering the very best in news and entertainment and carry that forward into a range of new delivery platforms such as SMS, MMS, live streaming to mobile handsets, IP TV, Video-on-demand (VOD)."

MBC currently provides a number of SMS and MMS services in several Arab countries, including breaking news, business news and sports highlights through Al Arabiya Mobile as well as voting, competitions, in-show participation and video-clips as extensions to channel programming on MBC1, MBC2, MBC4 and MBC FM.

MBC will launch its new mobile services early next year, aimed at providing more mobile-customized content, expanding reach and supporting a wider range of applications.

New services that will be added under the new MBC mobile portal umbrella will include TV program trailers, shorter versions of popular program episodes (Mobisodes), video snacking, mobile content, MMS and other user generated content.

The mobile portal will also have a library of downloadable video-on-demand content customized for mobile devices, as well the live streaming option which will allow users live access to their favorite MBC TV or Radio station.