Jim Balcom, the Canadian-born CEO of Mountain View, Calif.-based PolyFuel Inc., issued a warning this week that the United States (and Canada, I will add) risks “missing the boat” on micro fuel cells if it doesn’t begin to take the technology seriously.

Speaking at a conference in Washington, D.C., last week, Balcom said micro fuel cells, despite early innovation that has taken place in the United States, are being embraced more openly in Asia where a highly mature market of mobile gadget users crave more energy for their “power-eating” devices. Americans, he says, don’t seem to be as in-tune with the coming “power crisis” in portable electronics.

Micro fuel cells, or direct-methonal fuel cells, are being touted as a replacement to traditional throwaway and existing Lithium-ion battery technology because they last longer as a portable power supply for laptops, mobile phones and other gadgets. PolyFuel, of course, has an interest in the growth of this market because they have developed a membrane technology it hopes will become standard in most DMFCs.

One could accuse Balcom of fearmongering, but you can’t ignore his argument, considering the other ways North America has lost out to Asia as technology trends emerge.

“The interest in our membrane is so high in Asia – and increasingly in Europe – that it dominates our activities. We are already working with a number of major Japanese and Korean manufacturers, and we expect prototypes to be available within the next 12 to 24 months. I fear, however, that by the time the trendy applications take root here in the U.S., the design and manufacture of micro-power fuel cells will be firmly entrenched offshore. That ship will have sailed.”

He said the scenario is not unlike that of Lithium-ion batteries, a technology that was predominantly developed in the U.S. but commercialized first in Japan.

It’s still open for debate whether micro fuel cells will take hold for sure, particularly as advances in Lithium-ion technology allow for quicker charge times and longer energy storage. But certainly, Balcom’s got a point.

I recently spoke with Nadir Mohamed, CEO of Canada’s largest mobile phone company, and asked him what he thought of DMFCs and the need for longer lasting mobile phone batteries. He seemed to have a blind faith that power-requirement issues will be resolved before new services, such as mobile TV, are offered on a large scale to Canadian consumers.

“I’m a true believer that the technology will keep pace, and there will be more and more power in smaller and smaller devices,” he said, without offering any specifics and appearing to know very little about developments in DMFCs.

To be fair, it is the mobile phone manufacturers who need to be more directly grappling with this issue, but service providers are the ones who should be pushing, asking questions, and essentially setting the pace. Rogers, by the way, will soon launch MobiTV in Canada. On its FAQ, it says about battery life: “On a fully charged battery, you should be able to watch Television for about two to three hours.” I’m skeptical, having heard stories out of Asia that phones are dying 30 minutes or less into a show.

Fact remains that a multi-functional device that operates as a phone, contact database, digital camera, MP3 player and TV needs lots of juice, and I’ve seen no indication from Canadian carriers at least that phones with significantly longer battery life are on the way.

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