Qualcomm's $800 Million Wireless TV Network No One Wants
from the say-what? dept
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.






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