FLO TV is struggling and its owner Qualcomm wants to sell the business, reports the AP.
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs told analysts yesterday that the company is considering “a number of alternatives” for getting rid of the business. It’s in discussions with other companies and a deal is expected to be put together in the next year.
Audiovox, which sells a $399 FLO TV tuner for the car, said it has no comment at this time. Audiovox had recently stated that Best Buy will begin selling its FLO TV car tuner system this quarter as well as a portable DVD player with FLO TV built in.
FLO TV delivers 20 channels of video in a subscription TV service for portables, mobile phones and car TV products.
Qualcomm actually stated back in June, that the service had not found the audience that the company had expected, according to the Wall Street Journal.
FLO TV is offered by a division of Qualcomm called MediaFLO. It launched a few years ago on its own proprietary network running over spectrum owned by Qualcomm. Although the service was offered in some mobile phones, it was never embedded in the most popular models like the iPhone or Blackberry.
Jacobs said a FLO TV deal “will get done in the next year but I don’t think I can be much more specific than that…A lot of interesting discussions. It’s early days.”
Source: AP via MSN and the Wall Street Journal
Photo: Audiovox FLO TV
As a retail electronics store we have sold and installed several of the car units and every single person that has one loves it
Works excellent for me and has a ton of my clients excited. However the majority of them have not even heard of it prior. Marketing is key here.
Anyone could see this one coming from the beginning. Another subscription based offering? Really?