Viewership Rating for Mobile TV

FLO TV Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM - Analyst Report), together with its partner Rentrak Corp. (RENT - Snapshot Report) recently decided to launch the industry’s first comprehensive audience measurement and reporting system. This innovative technique will provide details of advertising sales on FLO TV and an in-depth study of its viewership pattern. Rentrak is a multi-screen media measurement and research company.

Qualcomm continues to lead mobile video market with the deployment of MediaFLO networks (that offers FLO TV services). In June, the mobile TV industry received a boost when the US government decided to switch to digital TV from analog transmission.

The immediate beneficiary of this was Qualcomm’s FLO TV network, which has already spent $500 million to buy spectrum that has been released. The company will now have the opportunity to broadcast its transmission in 100 major US markets serving more than 250 million potential customers. According to industry researches, market size for mobile TV may reach $10 billion by 2013 from $1.5 billion in 2008.

Advertisement in the mobile TV network is gaining huge market traction for the corporate world. Since each mobile device is connected to a specific viewer, the scope for audience-specific advertisement is enormous in this industry. Rentrak’s TV Essentials media management system will provide relevant viewership information on FLO TV network to several advertisers and content developers.

FLO-TV has been offered by the two largest telecom operators in the U.S., AT&T (T - Analyst Report) and Verizon Wireless (VZ - Analyst Report). The company has bought select licenses in the FCC auctions for 700-Mhz spectrum. Qualcomm has also started a trial run of FLO TV in Taiwan in collaboration with Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd. and China Network Systems. Successful delivery may result in further business opportunities in the vast Asian market.

To bolster its position, Qualcomm has entered multi-year licensing agreements with large media content/broadcaster companies to provide TV programs through the FLO TV mobile entertainment platform. CBS, CBS College Sports, CBS News, CNBC, Comedy Central, ESPN, ESPN News, ESPN 2, FOX, FOX News, FOX Sports, MSNBC, MTV, NBC, NBC 2Go, NBC News, NBC Sports and Nickelodeon are the channels which have joined hands with FLO TV.

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