VITAMEDIAS
Interactive TV revolution gets off to a slow start
TV Cabo, which has 1.2 million cable subscribers, predicted 100,000 customers by the end of last year for the service. Portugal was to be Microsoft's stepping stone to a world market.
But so far TV Cabo has attracted only around 10,000 customers, company sources said ["company sources" que nunca revelaram dados em Portugal...]. Microsoft has not extended its top-end service beyond this small European country. A company spokesman declined to say whether it would ever do so.
For the software giant, now focusing on a less ambitious service, the iTV dream has turned sour.
Two months ago, chairman Bill Gates acknowledged the company's iTV initiatives had dropped "a big negative number" on its balance sheet. In a rare bout of layoffs, 229 workers in the iTV unit lost their jobs.