A wave of US-based mobile phone start-ups, hoping to attract users to television, music and other premium services, are floundering as they fight over a thin slice of the US market, a Reuters report said.
The Reuters report, citing The Wall Street Journal, said about 30 wireless operators and hundreds of related wireless technology firms have been launched in the past four years, but many are struggling and face losses.
In the past 16 months, start-up cellular carriers raised at least $1 billion, according to Rutberg & Co., a San Francisco investment bank, the newspaper said.
But only 1% of mobile phone users regularly use their phones to watch videos, even as the number of US mobile phone subscribers has doubled over the past six years to 215 million, the report said.
Venture capitalists and others remain hopeful that the new-media offerings, which have proved popular in Asia, will prove the same in the US, the Reuters report further said.