Hulu App for iPhone Coming Soon

Hulu is currently private beta testing an iPhone app that is slated to be released in a few months according to this post which will function over 3G and Wi-Fi similar to Joost’s dedicated app.

From all accounts, Hulu is banking on Apple and AT&T to approve the app since it directly competes with iTunes and similar services offered by AT&T, but in order to really push the concept of mobile video into the mainstream it needs to be made available since the app can sell people (including anime fans) on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and AT&T service.

If Viz, Funimation, and all of the other companies providing content to Hulu get behind this, the best way to do it would be to promote the app as an easier way to grab episodes on the go and upsell episodes over iTunes after each episode for additional revenue as they do currently on the web portal.

The current state of anime over mobile is pretty sparse and lackluster in the US, with third-party delivery partners streaming content over saturated 3G data connections, low resolution, no hybrid language options, and prohibitively high costs per month compared to burgeoning alternatives.