During its earnings conference call, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs has confirmed that it is in talks to sell off the platform developer’s struggling mobile television initiative in MediaFLO with the timeline for the sale expected between this year and next before declining to elaborate further.
The broadcast technology utilizes the 700MHz spectrum closest to analog UHF TV channel 68 to deliver programming to phones and devices equipped with transceivers for a monthly fee in a bid to emulate the success of other mobile television initiatives such as T-DMB and 1seg in Korea and Japan respectively.
The FLOTV service was launched in 2007 with the help of Verizon Wireless and programming from NBC Universal, ESPN, News Corp, ABC Networks and Viacom with further expansion in 2008 to AT&T and international trials in order to drive growth with limited success. The MediaFLO division has also attempted a direct to consumer sales model with the launch of the HTC manufactured MediaFLO Mobile TV last year currently sold in Best Buy locations and given away during CES earlier this year.
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Frankly, I am not surprised to see this latest development. T-DMB is a much stronger and logical delivery mechanism for Mobile television for so many technical and operational – as is evidenced in the numerous markets where it is expanding on a global front.
As a member of the European Eureka 147 family it sits happily on existing and relatively cheap transmission and Multiplexing infrastructure that can simultaneously deliver a very heavy loading of Audio, Video and Data services to a wide choice of readily available receivers.
I am more surprised that it has taken so long for the situation to reach this point.
In the US, though, ATSC-M/H is winning the day, though it’s similar to T-DMB in terms of target audience.
Market winds really won here, the declining economy has consumers reluctant to pay yet another MSO for monthly content. People would much rather get mobile content via ATSC-M/H and prosumers are using Slingbox/Orb/etc anyways.