Startup Plans Late-2016 Debut of Smartphone Case With DTV Reception

As a phone case, the QuarterBack is “designed to protect your smartphone,” but also provides “auxiliary” battery storage, “so we like to compare it to a premium phone case with a battery,” said John Casey, Airwavs.tv chief technology officer. “But the unique thing that we bring to that concept is that it includes a stand, and a TV antenna and receiver as well,” Casey said. “So it does everything that the other premium smartphone cases with batteries do, plus the stand and the TV receiver.”

The QuarterBack is named for the quarter-sized slot designed into the back of the product, giving it a form factor that allows it to accommodate the auxiliary battery and a kickstand, Beeman said. The kickstand was crucial to the design, she said, because "I really wanted the device to sit upright, so that when you set the device down on a table, you can watch it at an angle without having to hold it." It came to her that "we could call the device QuarterBack, which is also the play on words for the most-watched TV show in the United States, which is the NFL," she said. The Patent and Trademark Office issued a May 2014 notice of allowance on the QuarterBack trademark (serial number 86107263) to Wearable TV Labs, Airwavs.tv’s former working name, agency records show. Issuance of an actual trademark registration certificate on QuarterBack awaits the company’s filing of the required statement of use under a third six-month deadline extension that expires in June, the records show.

QuarterBack’s first product manifestation will be for reception of over-the-air ATSC 1.0 broadcasts in the U.S., Casey said. “We’ve experimented with versions for different markets around the world, but expect to launch the ATSC 1.0 version first.” The company has begun working on an ATSC 3.0 version of the product, Casey said. Beeman has seats on several ATSC 3.0 committees at the ATSC, and “I’ve been doing a lot of work on ATSC 3.0 as well, so we have a strong background and we’re on top of that,” Casey said.

Casey thinks the QuarterBack is “a very compelling product as an ATSC 1.0 product,” he said. “But I believe that as a 3.0 product, it’s a killer app, because 3.0 enables so many additional features that we can leverage in this product.” For example, while the ATSC 1.0-enabled QuarterBack will be portable and can be used “in many different locations,” the 1.0 product “really does not do well in motion, so 3.0 solves that problem,” he said.

ATSC 3.0 “specifically solves the problem of targeting mobile devices with a more robust signal,” plus delivering the enhanced emergency-alerting functionality through the new Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) capability, Casey said. AWARN’s “bootstrap wake-up” feature for ATSC 3.0 receivers “is extremely robust,” and so “it could still alert you” while the QuarterBack and smartphone are “still in your pocket that there’s something going on,” he said. “You can take it out and tune in TV to find out about this important alert.” ATSC 3.0 also targets “better indoor coverage through the better support of SFN networks and stuff like that,” he said of single-frequency networks. “So 3.0 is really where this becomes a killer app.”

When a user attaches the QuarterBack to a smartphone, “we wanted to make this really easy,” Beeman said. “So you attach the hardware,” which “identifies that you’ve got an app from the store that you can download for free,” she said. “You install the app, and it works.” For iPhones, Casey thinks it will be possible to “trigger the app directly from the mating of the device,” he said. For Android smartphones, it’s likely the user will need to manually find and download the free app, he said.

The potential market opportunity for the QuarterBack “is as large as the smartphone market is,” Beeman said. “We’re narrowing it down to people who choose to protect their smartphone or tablet with a case,” she said. “And then we’re narrowing it further to people who look to have an auxiliary or portable battery attached to their smartphone or case.” Of the 200 million smartphone users in the U.S., more than half are Apple or Samsung owners, so the first QuarterBack “will be geared to providing support for those two product lines,” she said. “There are more, we could do more, I’m not sure yet.” But the market for Apple and Samsung premium smartphones “extends globally and is similar around the world,” she said. Additional QuarterBack form factors for tablets also will follow later, Casey said.

Of consumers who opt to buy protective cases for their smartphones, “the additional battery” that comes with some of those cases “is great,” Beeman said. But she and Casey agree “the onboard television” in the QuarterBack “is a great Trojan horse and a great way to introduce TV to the market in a way that is clever and easy to use and works as expected with some caveats that you have to be within a broadcast reach,” she said.

The plan is to launch the QuarterBack first in the U.S. for ATSC 1.0 “to show proof of concept,” Beeman said. “We’re not sure when ATSC 3.0 is going to be released to the public. There’s been lots of speculation. I’ve heard some broadcasters would like to turn it on as soon as fall. I think some broadcasters need more time to see what the spectrum repack and the incentive auction are going to look like.”

Through Airwavs.tv, “our message to television broadcasters is, don’t sell your TV spectrum -- exclamation point,” Beeman said. “We think that the product that we have designed is a very nice way for television broadcasters to reach a mobile audience. And for wireless carriers, it’s a great way to augment the capacity that they can’t provide, and the quality that they also can’t provide.”

With South Korea expected to be the first global market to go on the air with ATSC 3.0 when it does so next year, Beeman sees that country potentially as a “great opportunity” for the QuarterBack, she said. “There’s a lot of Asian markets that are actually looking at using ATSC 3.0,” she said. The QuarterBack’s “form factor itself is easy enough that when we’re getting into premium phones that are very thin, there’s a way to put a very strong television antenna onto a device, but doesn’t impact the dimensions of the phone, per se,” she said.

Airwavs.tv is looking at selling and marketing the QuarterBack in “a couple of different ways,” Beeman said. “We’ve been talking with some wireless carriers who are interested in this product because it serves a purpose for them to get high-definition video to a mobile audience.” The company also is in talks with wholesale distributors and retailers, she said. It’s also eyeing direct-to-consumer sales through its own online store, she said.

How the company will price the QuarterBack is “one of the questions I get a lot,” Beeman said. “We have done a considerable amount of research in this area, and right now what we’re looking at is to be consistent with products in the market that are able to provide a luxury cover of the device with a battery, and then look at the value of the TV.” The company has done “some price-elasticity models, and we know what that looks like,” she said. Casey said “we’re still trying to leave ourselves some flexibility” in how to price the product. But it’s “clear” that competitive products already play in the $99-$129 “kind of space,” he said. “And we clearly bring additional value beyond that with the stand and the TV,” he said. “So we expect to be competitive, given that ecosystem.”