Toshiba to exit mobile digital satellite broadcasting
31 Jul 2008
With only 100,000 paid subscribers as against the target of 1.5 million in the third year of its services Toshiba has finally decided to close down mobile digital satellite broadcasting services by March 2009, a ervice that it had been providing since 2004 through its subsidiary, Mobile Broadcasting Corp.
The Japanes company had made news worldwide when it launched these services in 2004 to become the first provider of direct-to-handset service, providing satellite digital multimedia broadcasts for mobile equipment.
In a press release the company said, ''The number of subscribers has not reached a sufficient level to sustain operations and following a thorough review of operations, the company has decided to cease broadcasting.''
Incidentally a South Korean company, which offers the same service and using the same satellite, has 200,000 subscribers in less than three months of operation.
Closing down this service will cost Toshiba a loss of $232.9 million after an operating loss of 8.2 billion yen on revenues of 2.7 billion yen in the year ended March.
Toshiba will however provide support to Mobile Broadcasting so that the customers and business partners are not stranded.
For Toshiba, this is another failure after the hard work it put into the next –generation DVD which had flopped.
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