Tuesday, October 5, 2010

qualcomm stops the flow on flo tv mobile video service


Qualcomm stops the flow on FLO TV mobile video service

October 4, 2010 | Dean Takahashi
1 Comment
Qualcomm has decided to shut down its struggling FLO TV mobile television service, paidContent reported.
The staff was told last week by Bill Stone, president of MediaFlo and FLO TV, that the mobile TV service will shut down by the end of the year. The company is talking with AT&T and Verizon about what to do with its secondary business, a non-branded service that carriers can adopt as their own branded TV services.
Earlier this summer, Qualcomm chief executive Paul Jacobs acknowledged that the service wasn’t setting the world on fire and that Qualcomm might better use the radio spectrum it bought to offer the one-of-a-kind service to distribute other content.
Instead of providing programming for the network, Qualcomm was considering leasing it. Qualcomm hasn’t yet officially commented on the plans. FLO TV was founded in 2004, attracting Verizon and AT&T as distribution partners. But it requires Qualcomm hardware. Qualcomm launched its own service, FLO TV, in 2008. Qualcomm signed up lots of content, including CNN, ESPN, Discovery and other channels. The service is available in more than 100 cities.
Qualcomm made a big push with its own FLO TV device (pictured above) in 2009. The service was able to squeeze 20 channels into its bandwidth — which was previously the UHF channel 55 — and there was no buffering or lag time that frustrates users of most cell phone video services. Any FLO TV-enabled device (including Qualcomm phone models on the Verizon and AT&T networks as well as the dedicated Personal Television) could pull the TV programming in over the air from Qualcomm’s digital broadcast network.
But users weren’t that interested in acquiring a unique mobile device and paying a $10 a month subscription for mobile TV in addition to buying a device. On top of that, new kinds of competition emerged, such as mobile video on demand services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus on the iPhone, iPad, Android and RIM phones.
DB2010Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. The conference takes place on October 18th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Sponsors can contact us atsponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, click here.
Previous Story: 
Print
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Delicious
Google
More…
Tags: , 
Companies: , , 
People: , 


FLO TVhttp://www.flotv.com/
Watch CompanyGet Widget
Officially speaking, FLO TV is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated. Unofficially, we're the instant gratification group that built the partnerships and the dedicated network needed to...More»
Overview
LOCATION: San Diego, CA, United States
Market
FLO TV Company Profile powered by VentureBeat Profiles.
Photo of Dean Takahashi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at  @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

SHOWING 1 COMMENTS

Sort by    Subscribe by email   Subscribe by RSS
  • I knew this was doomed the minute I saw it on the store shelf. Cnsumers want control of their programming on the go and can get it through at least four other vectors while on the go. Paying for controlled programming that users already received elsewhere made no sense at all. Cool tech, bad business model.

ADD NEW COMMENT

Required: Please login below to comment.

REACTIONS

Trackback URL 
blog comments powered by DISQUS
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)