Zhang expects CMMB sales to pick up during the Shanghai World Expo next year, boosted by marketing campaigns at that time.
Free trials of CMMB during last summer's Beijing Olympic Games attracted about 1.4 million users, including about 100,000 in Shanghai. However, the market has shrunk rapidly since the fourth quarter of 2008 when CBC introduced a conditional access system.
“It probably makes more sense if users can have access to some basic channels free of charge, and pay when they want to watch more channels. Shutting down all the free channels has hurt people's interest in CMMB,” said Will Kong, an analyst at research firm iSuppli.
"I believe that video-on-demand delivered over 3G has more potential than CMMB mobile TV broadcasting. Nowadays people are more interested in services like YouTube - where you can choose from numerous video clips - than a watching limited number of TV channels passively," an industry source said.
Due to limitation of spectrum, fewer than 20 channels can be transmitted over CMMB technology, he said.