Motorola is betting it can reverse its dire recent performance and face down calls for its break-up by finally convincing consumers to tune in to mobile TV.

The struggling handsets giant will unveil a paperback-sized gadget that displays live and downloaded TV content at next week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The Mobile TV DH01 will come equipped with a 4.3 inch screen and use the DVB-H broadcasting standard that Motorola, Nokia and Intel have been pushing for the past two years. Alternatively, a user can record up to 90 minutes of TV programming on a digital recorder at home and transfer it to the device via a memory card.

Motorola, which parted company with chief executive Ed Zander last month after reporting a 94 per cent collapse in third-quarter profits, will also use CES, the world's largest trade show, to promote to operators the infrastructure that underpins its Mobile TV system.

That mission may well take all the razzmatazz Vegas can muster - despite years of pilot projects, interest in on-the-go television remains unclear.

BT, Microsoft and Virgin Mobile joined forces to push a service in 2006, after Motorola, Nokia and Intel announced their support for the DVB-H standard. Even at that stage, the market was crowded: Vodafone offered a mobile TV service with BSkyB, the broadcaster that is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times. Orange matched that with a 3G-based rival.

Despite those pathfinders, a recent survey from Canalys, the researcher, found that half of the public has no interest in the concept of mobile TV, regardless of cost and available content.

The technology has confounded expectations elsewhere also. Nokia, for instance, found that South Korean teenagers, the most enthusiastic adopters so far, mostly watch it in their bedrooms - an environment where a need for mobility seems minimal.

Nevertheless, a report from Screen Digest, the researcher, predicts that mobile TV will generate €4.7 billon a year in revenues by 2011. The format’s future in the UK, meanwhile, may rest on the forthcoming auction of spectrum vacated by conventional television’s switch to digital, which could be used for mobile TV.

Motorola, however, faces calls to take its future in its own hands. Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that it may be considering the break-up plan that Carl Icahn, the activist investor, says would unlock $20 billion in additional shareholder value by offloading everything but the group's core handset business.

The current credit crunch raises doubts over whether Motorola's radio, infrastructure and set-top box divisions would find buyers, but Mr Zander’s successor, Greg Brown, is seen as more open to a deal.

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