On Super Bowl Sunday, about 116 million viewers watched commercials touting Budweiser, Doritos and Coke -- as well as spots promoting Flo TV, a service that promises to let you watch TV wherever you are.
It was a high-profile promotion for mobile TV, which despite years of innovation has failed to catch on outside of a few niches.
A mobile TV service from Qualcomm, Flo offers channels such as ESPN, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central for a monthly fee. You can watch Flo on your cellphone, in your car or on a dedicated device known as a personal television.
"Flo is a prepackaged entertainment experience," says Alice Kim, senior vice president of strategy & corporate development for Flo TV. "It's about portability, it [is] about live video and it is complementary to your home experience."
Mobile TV, which bring television news and shows to handheld devices, could be the next big thing for consumers who want to watch a game while on the subway, or catch up on their favorite TV show while waiting at the DMV. For instance, with Flo TV, you can get Jon Stewart on The Daily Show or live NBA games with a few clicks. The 3-inch screen is small, but it's more convenient than a netbook.
But it's a difficult sell. U.S. consumers so far have failed to jump on the mobile TV idea, even though it's been around for years. Just about 1 percent of mobile users in the U.S. watch mobile TV. And even there, Flo faces some stiff competition. Rivals MobiTV and Sling Media also offer TV content to go. Last month, AT&T allowed iPhone users to access live and streaming TV on the Sling player over 3G. Meanwhile, a coalition of local broadcasters has formed a group called theOpen Mobile Video Coalition that attempts to bring free TV content to mobile devices.
"The idea is to be an alternative to the DVR," says Ross Rubin, an analyst with research firm The NPD Group. "Prime time can be when you say it is or you can always tune in to live programming."
Flo TV is alluring to some -- especially when you have restless kids on your hands. Just ask Tyren Patterson, a Michigan-based Flo TV user who has been paying $25 a month for the service since 2006 on his LG Voyager. "When we go out and run errands or shopping and the kids get to start to antsy it's good to be able to turn on Nickelodeon," he says.
Patterson, a Verizon Wireless customer, has been a subscriber to Verizon's V Cast service, which is powered by Flo TV.
"I use it everyday," he says. "When you turn it on and start flipping the channels and see basketball games there's the wow factor. The cost doesn't matter then."
Customers like Patterson may be few today (Qualcomm won't disclose how many Flo TV users there are currently) but there are 200 million cellphone users who could become potential users, says the company. Flo rival MobiTV claims to have more than 7 million subscribers.
Where Flo TV says it hopes to distinguish itself is by offering the kind of shows and channels that most consumers would really want to watch, by offering high-quality video, and by time-shifting so you can watch shows when it's convenient to you.
Flo -- which stands for Forward Link Only -- takes standard video signals and re-formats them for the mobile platform. Flo's network operations center transcodes and compresses broadcast content into a single package that is sent to transmitters using satellite, microwave or optical fiber. The transmitters then send it to receiving devices over the 700-MHz spectrum.
"Flo TV's network is explicitly designed for this and does a very good job of it," says Rubin.
And because it's a push technology with one-way data transmission, from the tower to the device, it doesn't overload the network. Video through Flo TV is smooth and doesn't stutter, says Kim. But to run Flo TV, devices need to have a special chip made by Qualcomm.
To popularize Flo TV, Qualcomm hopes to bring down the price of the service and offer it on a variety of devices. A personal TV that runs Flo costs $200 today, down from $250 just months before, Kim says. Meanwhile, AT&T has reduced subscription fees for the device to $10 a month from $15 earlier.
And on the road map are new devices such as a personal DVD player from Audiovox that will come with Flo TV, and a shot at the iPhone and iPod Touch market through a collaboration with battery and accessories maker Mophie.
"We are not trying to make a choice for the consumer, we are trying to give them choices," says Kim.
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