Electronics giant Toshiba announced it will shutter its Mobile Broadcasting Corporation subsidiary in March 2009, citing anemic consumer interest. MBC's MobaHo! service launched in Japan in 2004 and attracted only around 100,000 subscribers in four years' time; Toshiba originally forecast subscriber totals in excess of a million by the end of 2007. The first mobile TV service to debut on the ISDB standard 2.6GHz band, MobaHo! presently offers eight video channels as well as 40 audio channels--however, the service required users to acquire either a dedicated device or a PC card, no doubt hampering adoption.
For more on the MobaHo! shutdown:
- read this BetaNews article [1]
Related article:
Forecast: Mobile TV [2] subs to grow to 462M by 2012
Links:
[1] http://www.betanews.com/article/Toshiba_to_shut_down_mobile_broadcast_TV_service/1217454845
[2] http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/forecast-mobile-tv-subs-grow-462m-2012/2008-01-24