Qualcomm Pushes FLO Into European Market

TechNewsWorld writes that Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) and News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) "announced plans to conduct technical trials of Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology in the United Kingdom. The technical trial is expected to launch this summer. It will feature 10 channels of BSkyB content on a small number of non-commercial devices provided by Qualcomm."

According to the article, "during the trial, BSkyB will evaluate the performance capabilities of FLO, or Forward Link Only, technology -- an open, cellular-network-agnostic wireless multicasting technology -- as it continues to explore the growing number of opportunities to deliver video services to mobile devices in the United Kingdom."

This "is expected to be the first such trial of FLO technology in Europe. In addition to this technical trial, Qualcomm and KDDI have formed a joint venture to explore the deployment of MediaFLO services in Japan. MediaFLO USA, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, is working with Verizon Wireless to deploy wireless multimedia services based on FLO technology in the United States."

In-Stat Analyst David Chamberlain said, "What Qualcomm is doing in video is exactly what it did in cellular, which is to say it has superior technology and it thinks people should use that instead of DVH-B, which was designed in Europe. Many people have already said they are going to DVH-B technology, so Qualcomm is trying to wedge open the technology argument." Chamberlain predicted that "the European technology will win out in the end."