Qualcomm Reportedly Moving to Close Flo TV Operation

Last year, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) announced during the CTIA Wireless trade show that it was introducing a handheld personal TV to help boost interest in its Flo TV business, which has been flagging. This year, it looks like the San Diego wireless giant will be confronting reports of a planned shutdown of its Flo TV operations during the CTIA trade show that begins Wednesday at the Moscone Center West in downtown San Francisco.

Qualcomm executives informed Flo TV employees last week that the company plans to shut down the business, which broadcasts live events and other programming directly to consumer devices, according to a report today by Staci Kramer in PaidContent. The shutdown will reportedly be by the end of this year, although it’s unclear how that will affect Flo TV’s partnerships with AT&T and Verizon, which depend on Qualcomm’s Flo TV operation center in San Diego for their nationwide broadcasts.

Bill Stone, the president of Qualcomm MediaFlo and Flo TV, did not immediately respond to my e-mail query about the report. I also sent an e-mail query to Qualcomm’s public relations staff.

As we reported during Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference this summer, Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs has been saying the company never intended to operate Flo TV indefinitely, which is why Flo TV operates as an independent subsidiary. Jacobs told reporters then, and Wall Street analysts a few weeks later during a conference call, that it was unlikely Flo TV will stay as it is through the next year. Jacobs also has publicly discussed that it might use Flo TV’s spectrum and network to ease the congestion on wireless networks.

“With respect to our FLO TV business, we’re engaged in discussions with a number of partners regarding the future direction of the business,” Jacobs said in July during the company’s conference call to discuss its third-quarter financial results. Whatever happens with Flo TV “will get done in the next year, but I don’t think I can be much more specific than that,” Jacobs said.

Qualcomm has reportedly spent $800 million to develop its Flo TV business, including an estimated $683 million Qualcomm paid to acquire the necessary spectrum licenses in scores of U.S. metropolitan markets.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.