Olympics Pushes Up Sales of Mobile TV Handsets in Japan
Japan's Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) has announced that just under 5.1 million mobile phones were shipped in June - a 2.1% rise year on year. This is the first time the shipments exceeded 5 million since July 2007.
However, the figures showed that the tally for the first half of this year was down 5.2% to 24.92 million hansets.
Of the total, some 73.5% were compatible with the One-Seg digital terrestrial broadcasting service.
"It appears that people bought One-Seg compatible phones to watch the Beijing Olympics on TV while away from home," a spokesman for a cell phone manufacturer told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. "The replacement cycle has gotten longer and June's increase [in shipments] is only a temporary phenomenon."
Posted to the site on 24th August 2008
