• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 19, 2006

Highlighting wireless carriers' growing battle to stockpile popular media properties, Cingular Wireless and Sprint announced separate mobile content deals Monday.

Cingular has begun offering a wireless version of MySpace that lets users upload photos, edit their profiles, add friends and send and receive MySpace messages for an extra $2.99 a month.

The social networking site with 140 million users already has a presence on the mobile service Helio.

Subscribers are expected to be able to watch videos from MySpace by next year. MySpace Mobile will be available through Cingular exclusively for the next few months, according to a company spokesperson.

The agreement builds on an existing relationship between the companies that includes MySpace Mobile Studio, a promotional effort that enabled Cingular subscribers to download ringtones based on music from unsigned bands and artists on MySpace.

Separately, Sprint has added a mobile version of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," which includes her daily monologue, show highlights and special remote segments for Sprint Power Vision subscribers. Through Sprint TV, the carrier already offers more than 50 channels of live and on-demand video including Fox Sports, Comedy Central, Sirius Music and Mspot Movies.

Through its V Cast data service, Verizon Wireless also offers a wide range of media and entertainment programming from MTV to the Weather Channel. The carrier made a splash last month when it announced that it would start distributing clips from video-sharing sites YouTube and Revver.

"From the standpoint of adding more content, it seems like there's an arms race going on between Verizon and Sprint," said William Ho, a senior wireless services analyst at technology research firm Current Analysis. "Cingular is just catching up in terms of table stakes." But while Cingular may not offer as much video content as its rivals, Ho noted that its relationship with MySpace should help make the service more attractive to young mobile subscribers.

Forty-five percent of U.S. mobile subscribers ages 18 to 24 engaged in some form of social networking via cell phone--including photo-messaging, video-messaging and chat--based on a three-month average through October, according to mobile research firm MMetrics.

The wireless major carriers are counting on exclusive deals for popular online and offline content to help drive growth of premium subscription packages. About 47% of the 194 million mobile users in the U.S. subscribe to data plans, according to MMetrics. Text-messaging remains by far the most popular data application, despite the hype surrounding mobile video and TV.