Qualcomm signals sale of mobile-TV platform

Chipmaker Qualcomm is looking to sell off MediaFLO, its mobile television platform.

MediaFLO supports Qualcomm's FLO TV mobile television service, which is supported in the US by telcos such as AT&T and Verizon.

In a conference call earlier this week, Qualcomm chief executive officer Paul Jacobs was questioned about the potential future for the service. He told investors that: "We are in discussions with a number of partners regarding the future direction of the business. We are considering a number of alternatives. It will get done in the next year."

In 2008 Qualcomm spent £8.3m on purchasing 40MHz of the UK spectrum, with analysts tipping the spectrum as a prime carrier for mobile TV broadcasting. At the time, Qualcomm did not say what it intended the spectrum for.

The status of the 40MHz of spectrum that Qualcomm owns is unknown, as it bought the spectrum with no end date.

Between 2003 and 2008, Qualcomm spent $683m (£443m) buying spectrum for the service in the USA alone, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The service, which intended to deliver TV content to mobiles, was expensive to setup, requiring Qualcomm to invest in transmission towers, deals with content providers and to make sure that consumer mobiles had the necessary hardware to run the surface.

"There are many black holes for the unwary tech CEO to fall into, but two of the oldest and blackest are video phones and pocket TV," wrote David Manners on his Electronics Weekly blog Mannerisms.