A baffling array of mobile devices, many equipped with front-facing cameras and video-chat software, are arriving now or will be soon. In addition to the aforementioned Samsung tablet, and , there's the business tablet, the tepidly received , and a host of other . There's a good chance that Apple will bring a camera and FaceTime to the next-gen and iPad too.

Unlike conventional voice-calling, today's video-chat landscape is a balkanized world rife with competing and mostly incompatible offerings, including , Apple's , , , , and (perhaps eventually) Microsoft's new .

While tech-savvy users can certainly manage to set up and conduct a video conference, the process involves a certain degree of planning and preparation. It's nowhere as easy as making a standard voice call, a shortcoming that likely won't improve in the near future.

With the arrival of 4G wireless broadband, and the growing availability of Wi-Fi in businesses and public locations, the infrastructure required for video chat is quickly becoming a reality. It may not be here today, of course, but the network plumbing will soon be in place. What's missing is a dead-simple video calling application that works across all devices and mobile operating systems.

FaceTime may work well on iPhone 4 units connected to Wi-Fi networks, but Apple's approach is both proprietary and limited. And while Steve Jobs would like to make FaceTime an , it's questionable whether powerful competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and Cisco would agree to that.