Qualcomm Says Price Cuts Coming to MediaFLO
According to MediaFLO’s new CEO, Bill Stone, the company is prepared to drop the price of monthly access to its mobile TV services. Right now, both AT&T and Verizon Wireless offer MediaFLO content — which is run on a separate proprietary network by Qualcomm — for $25 per month. Stone acknowledged that the high price was hurting adoption.
He said the new pricing will probably be “less than $10 per month.” Stone also said that the lack of MediaFLO-capable handsets has hurt adoption, too. To combat that, the company plans to introduce a stand-alone device that can receive MediaFLO signals and re-transmit them to a cellphone or laptop via Wi-Fi. Qualcomm would then be free to sell its services directly to consumers, rather than through its wireless network operator partners.
