The Corpse Princess has set her sights on smart phones.

The anime series of the same name is coming out on DVD September 14, and distributor FUNimation Entertainment is using the mobile advertising network iVdopia to get the word out. It’s all about engaging fans of anime, a genre of animation with roots in Japanese manga, or comics.

Something called the Viper Ad lets users swipe away an entire screen-takeover with a fingertip, unearthing the next image. With mobile social media, users will be able to share Corpse Princess videos with friends on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Fans will also be able to view multiple clips from the series on their phones.

The campaign for the DVD release of the show, titled Shikabane Hime in the original Japanese, is a natural progression for a business that has long understood–and even encouraged–fan sharing. For example, the Internet is rife with fan-translated chapters of popular manga long before they’re released in English–which copyright owners allow to remain out there, knowing that these translations increase consumers’ interest for a book’s official release. While other video content owners fear allowing copyrighted material to be viewed on mobiles, the anime/manga industry gets it.

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You just received an invitation from Apple.

Where are you headed, you ask? To the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California this morning for the company’s annual September event and, presumably, new product/service roll out.

But here’s the catch. You’ll be able to attend from the comfort of wherever your nearest iDevice or Mac is located.

According to Apple, the company will broadcast its event online using Apple’s “industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad.”

The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 am PST and be available exclusively at www.apple.com.

Great news for people who keep up with their favorite shows via online video: Vimeo today released its Universal Player that allows viewers to watch embedded videos on mobile devices.

It’s a move that, methinks, will help force content owners to start making their videos available to mobile consumers. Last week I opined the inability of mobile phones–even those with Android 2.2 and its Flash capabilities–to play videos on Hulu, due to copyright owners not wanting their material on the platform. But Vimeo has long been a great, er, alternative to official network video sites. (I waver on the term alternative since, rather, it’s one of the unofficial sites that got networks and production companies to realize they needed to put their materials online themselves.)

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Over the weekend I was pleased as punch when my EVO informed me that the upgrade to the latest Android OS–Android 2.2, also known by the wannabe-hip nickname Froyo–was available for the handset. I’ve been eager for the upgrade, mostly because of reports that Android 2.2 would allow smartphones to play Flash videos, the format of videos on Hulu. One more thing the EVO will do that the iPhone can’t, I cackled to myself.

Wah-wuh. I’d momentarily forgotten that Hulu’s inability to be played on phones is due mostly to content owners’ decision to make them unavailable on the mobile platform. My EVO still has full Flash capability, an improvement from the so-called “Flash Lite” support of earlier Android incarnations (not to mention Apple’s non-support of the format). But it was still a bummer not to be able to rewatch the Glee finale in bed during a bout of insomnia. And so for me, an enthusiastic mobile video and mobile Internet consumer, the new Android is about as much an improvement as the Malibu Stacy doll on The Simpsons getting a new hat.

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Mobile video is beginning to become an important aspect to rich media mobile advertising, but the underlying technology has been limiting in terms of compatibility.

iVdopia, provider of a rich media mobile ad network based in India, has just launched a solution to eliminate these issues with its new HTML5-based video platform dubbed “V5.”  The new platform allows the ability to provide a unified video ad experience across all devices and Smartphones, regardless of whether they support Flash.  iVdopia claims its the first to offer a “create once, run anywhere” tool for mobile video advertising.

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A new forecast out from eMarketer estimates total revenue from mobile video will grow from roughly $548 million in 2010 to nearly $1.3 billion by 2014.

The population of mobile video viewers in the US is estimated to grow nearly 30% in 2010 to reach 23.9 million users, while it still represents a reach of only 7.7% of the total population and less than 10% of mobile phone users.  This number is set to double by 2013, according to eMarketer.

The number of mobile video viewers, which includes people of any age who watch video content on mobile phones through mobile browsers, subscriptions, downloads or applications at least once per month, will continue growing in the double digits for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% from 2009 through 2014.

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ABI Research has released data indicating that revenue from mobile video services is set to top $2 billion by 2013, driven in large part by increased availability of 4G data services and video-centric smartphones and tablets.

ABI predicts video telephony, video messaging and video-on-demand will account for a majority of the revenue earned from mobile video, but that it could get interesting as MNOs compete for earnings as consumers’ appetite for mobile video consumption continues to grow.

In addition to the popularity and adoption of OTT services that provide intense competition for MNO-branded mobile video services, other limiting factors to the industry’s overall growth include an insufficient range and variety of video-capable mobile devices, as well as business models that are “immature and imperfectly matched to consumers’ preferences,” cited the report.

“Video services revenue will only amount to about $121 million this year,” says senior analyst Mark Beccue. “But the growth curve is very steep indeed, and will only continue to accelerate through the end of our forecast period in 2015.”

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