Qualcomm, which once produced its own handsets to try to win wider acceptance of its cell phone chips, is repeating the strategy with the announcement of a Personal TV product, aimed at boosting take-up of its FLO TV mobile technology.
The new handheld device is FLO branded, Frog designed and made for Qualcomm by Taiwan’s HTC. It will go on sale at US retailers during the holiday season for $249 and will require a monthly subscription of around $10.
(This review was first published on October 7, 2009)
Qualcomm has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a national broadcast network and recruiting content partners for its live TV channels service for cell phones equipped with its FLO chips.
It has been adopted by the leading US carriers, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, but Qualcomm needs the service to achieve greater scale to justify its investment.
It has struck a deal with Audiovox to bring FLO TV to cars and the Personal TV takes the service further beyond the cell phone.
When I spoke to Bill Stone, FLO TV president, about Qualcomm going it alone with its own device, he said AT&T and Verizon price the the service at around $25 a month when they package it with some of their other data offerings.
“My view is that’s shooting over the heads of the market a little bit, I think the opportunity to get to a $10 monthly price point with a lot more breadth of content is going to be really attractive to customers,” he said.
There will be up to 20 channels of content, including NBC, MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. Four gigabytes of Flash memory on the device will allow recording and time-shifting of programming and provision of on-demand services.
Qualcomm also plans to introduce accessories early next year that will FLO TV-enable devices like the iPhone, through either a separate Wi-Fi based device or an attachment.
The focus is on the US for now, with FLO TV expected to be available in 100 local markets by the end of the year, but international growth will also be needed for Qualcomm’s FLO TV chip production to scale.
