The chief executive for chip and technology licensors Qualcomm Inc. has been quoted as saying the company is testing television programming for cell phones with such major content providers as CNN, Court TV, and ESPN.
"Interest in video far outstrips any other [cell phone] feature," Paul Jacobs was quoted by news wire services as having told a May 5 meeting of telecommunications analysts.
Qualcomm is also in trials with ABC News, The Weather Channel, the Arts & Entertainment network, and MLB.com, the website of major league baseball. Whether any trial partner would include adult broadcasting companies has yet to be reported.
Jacobs is said to believe that TV phones could outstrip use of all other types of cell phones, including those with cameras, which are already popular with consumers.
Qualcomm is already planning to spend around $800 million to build a cell phone TV network in 2006, and Jacobs reportedly told those at the analyst meeting that the company expects video on telephones to become the most popular advanced mobile service.
Two months earlier, Jacobs told Reuters that Qualcomm signed deals with content providers for the MediaFLO television network Qualcomm expects to spin off once it becomes a larger-scale operation, though he did not identify those partners, the wire service said.
MediaFLO is set up to deliver what Qualcomm calls "unprecedented volumes of high-quality, streaming or clipped audio and video multimedia to wireless subscribers." Qualcomm introduced the product in March 2004.
