Time's up for struggling direct to consumer unit of mobile broadcast TV operation.
According to PaidContent the division will close by the end of the year. Bill Stone, president of MediaFlo and FLO TV, told his team the news last night.
The decision follows months, even years, of rumours that Qualcomm was looking to offload the operation.
Now attention will turn to the future of the Media FLO-based broadcast TV service Qualcomm currently powers for AT&T and Verizon.
It shouldn't come as a shock. During Uplinq in July, Stone told ME he was 'not happy' with its performance so far – a candid admission for a tightly media-trained ship like Qualcomm.
Meanwhile Jacobs told paidContent in June that Qualcomm has always planned to sell or spin off MediaFlo but insisted then that a shutdown wasn’t in the plans.
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Though the Media FLO spectrum is worth almost $2 billion, this is still a blow for Qualcomm.
It floundered like most broadcast TV services on mobile because users prefer to snack on short form content downloaded or streamed over the 3G network or wi-fi.
The service founded first launched with Verizon in 2007, then in 2008 with AT&T. It's been trialled elsewhere in the world.
Qualcomm then launched direct-to-consumer FLO TV in 2008, based on made for purpose portable players.
