To Vidiator Technology Inc., text messaging is so five minutes ago. And it's testimony to the Bellevue software company's good business sense that it initially decided to carry that attitude to just about everywhere in the world but the United States. But that's changing as Vidiator, well-established in overseas markets wildly in love with streaming mobile multimedia content, turns its attention to the U.S., which is waking up from its cellular slumber.

Launched in 2002, Vidiator, financially backed by Hutchison Whampoa, a multi-billion dollar international wireless operator, develops cutting-edge technology for streaming media on mobile networks. With speed and interactivity among its primary goals, Vidiator enables you to watch a live TV show or rock concert on a mobile handset, stream songs whenever you want on a mobile device rather than downloading and storing them, and tap your handset to deliver messages to your friends using an avatar, an animated talking head. Streaming content isn't a new concept. What is unique about Vidiator is the company's focus on changing the way people use mobile devices. The company wants to maximize the potential of mobile streaming by increasing its speed and reliability and by creating new interactive experiences, including enabling users to create animated 3-D messages, watch TV on the go and receive advertising while in transit.

"Immediacy," says Vidiator CEO Connie Wong, "is the nature of the mobile user."

The nature of Vidiator is to shake things up in the global mobile multimedia market at a time when people increasingly are informing and entertaining themselves though audio and video, graphics and animation.

Washington state has long spawned companies that look to overseas markets after they are established. Vidiator is taking that one step further. It began by first serving the international markets that craved what it offers, and only now is turning to the U.S. market.

That strategy, of course, was dictated by the market. Asia and Europe can't get enough of the mobile multimedia experience Vidiator enables. Not so in America, although it's starting to come around, spurred by improvements in U.S. mobile technology and a growing market of young people who seem lost without a cell phone in their hand.

When Vidiator began five years ago, "Multimedia messaging was a nonstarter in the U.S.," says Tony Rizzo, director of mobile technology research for The 451 Group, a research firm that analyzes emerging information technologies. Vidiator, Rizzo adds, "had to go global."

It helps that the region Vidiator calls home is positioned we on the international stage. The University of Washington, for example, is a magnet for international students, some of whom stay in the region after they graduate or otherwise create or maintain ties to businesses here. And Washington has a reputation for open attitudes, ethnic diversity and intellectual capital.

Wong, who grew up in Hong Kong, describes herself as a "global citizen." She declines to discuss Vidiator's financials but notes the company is growing. Its staff has grown to 110 from just 15 in 2002, when it was founded. While Vidiator had no customers in 2002, it now has more than 300 in more than 20 countries such as China, Italy, Portugal and Sweden, including such big names as AT&T, Motorola Inc., Siemens Corp., Vodafone Group Plc, Walt Disney Internet Group and RealLife Television.

Vidiator holds at least eight patents and has 30 pending. The company has been busy this year. In February, for example, Vidiator struck a deal with Portugal-based Rádio e Televisão de Portugal SA, a national public service broadcaster, to deliver live and on-demand TV content for mobile devices. In June, Vidiator inked a deal with China's portal 3G.cn to allow consumers to send and receive 3-D avatar-based cards, messages, advertisements and newscasts. It was the first deployment of 3-D avatar cards and messaging in China, opening Vidiator's 3-D avatar services to more than 450 million subscribers, 130 million of whom use mobile Internet services.