Qualcomm's $800 Million Wireless TV Network No One Wants

from the say-what? dept

Mon, Nov 1st 2004 6:13pm — Mike Masnick

For quite some time now, we've been wondering if anyone actually wants TV on their mobile phones. People have had access to portable TVs in the past, and they failed. The idea of watching mobile TV on your phone doesn't seem to make that much sense. You're usually on the go, meaning you're much less interested in actually watching a tiny, tiny screen in your hand -- especially when the programming designed for TV requires you to sit still for 30 minute or one hour chunks. In fact, it cames as no surprise today that a new study showed that almost no one wants to watch video on their portable devices. They'd much rather listen to music, or something that actually fits with what they're doing and what's going on around them, rather than requiring them to find a chunk of time and sit alone. So, can anyone explain why Qualcomm has decided to blow nearly a billion dollars on a wireless system for broadcasting TV to mobile devices? The idea, of course, is to drive demand for Qualcomm technology -- pushing people to adopt higher speed networks and newer phones, all of which require a payment of some kind to Qualcomm. However, if no one actually wants mobile TV, then isn't this just a big waste of money? Not only that, but is there really a reason why a separate network is needed? We already have things like MobiTV that is offered by both Sprint and AT&T Wireless to let people watch TV on mobile phones, and it doesn't seem like the demand is so strong that it needs its own special wireless network just for TV.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

1 Comment

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 1 Nov 2004 @ 6:13pm

MedioFLO
First, a significant aspect of MediaFLO is its audio channels. As for video, I think the concept is brilliant in creating a new media approach as significant as satellite TV, basic cable, extended cable or over-the-air TV. This discontinuity will create new classes of programming which will bring as much creative change as going from CBS/ABC/NBC oligopoly of yore to 200+ cable channels today. Consider the simultaneous changes occuring: the capacity & QoS of the FLO air interface, the link budget at 700 MHz, the screen resolution and battery life using the new Iridigm technology (which QCOM recently paid $170M to acquire), the steeply declining cost of SD memory, the explosion of IP-based video content and demographics of people <30. Comparing MobiTV to MediaFLO is like comparing WAP 1.0 to the interface on a Treo 650. Past failure is not necessarily a good predictor of future failure.
[ link to this | view in thread ]