The dubious plan to dominate television Intel - Technology Review in Spanish

doubtful Intel plan to dominate television

The fall in sales of PCs and server market Intel processors are maiming, and its plan to sell services to the biggest screen in the house has a long way to go.

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• Friday, April 26, 2013
• By Jessica Leber
• In Lia Moya (Opinno)

When Intel finally revealed his mysterious media division in February, many outside the industry do not understand anything. Why chipmaker, has already tried to sell consumer products before and failed, is attempting to launch a TV service, one of the most difficult consumer markets there?

computer companies including Apple (see “The next innovation of Apple TV”), Google and Microsoft have spent years striving to become ISPs. They see that there is a huge pay-TV market that is ready to undergo a transformation in the style of Silicon Valley. The current television interfaces are overly complicated and packets are swollen with premium content that most subscribers do not see. Moreover, there are new business opportunities in the new way of watching TV, which is increasingly social and mobile, and that technology companies are well placed to exploit.

Intel’s ambitions make sense given that the company needs a new business to grow and have liquidity. PC sales are falling, the market research firm IDC recently reported the worst quarter ever in this market since it began collecting data in 1994 – while mobile devices become more powerful substitutes for PCs The earnings report for the first quarter of 2013, Intel has released this week, reflects that decline, with revenue falling 6 percent in its PC division, responsible for 8,000 of the 12,600 million quarterly revenue (6.144 and 9.678 million euros, respectively). Meanwhile, the mobile chip business the company is still in its infancy (see “Despite progress, the Intel mobile chips are still unpopular.”)

Intel

team has an impressive television with over 300 employees led by former BBC executive Erik Huggers. It also has interesting technology, including a camera looking at viewer and serves to make program suggestions based on who is watching TV and a digital video recorder based on cloud allows viewers back in time and see programs that were lost, without having to burn them.

But many in the industry are skeptical that a television service exclusively for the United States is the billionaire business that Intel needs to increase revenue, in part by the challenge of negotiating licensing agreements for exclusive live content . “It’s an expensive project with little chance of success,” said Bernard Gershon, former senior executive of Walt Disney who developed digital business strategy for TV content company and now works as a consultant.

Until now, the problem that exists with the dreams of all technology companies on how we watch TV, is that new entrants need the approval of an important part of the established industry: companies like Disney, MTV and Time Warner which possess many programs and channels. What they fear most is television programmers appears a cheaper service and customizable end its ability to package together popular and unpopular channels with a single price. But if you do not break these “packages”, any TV subscription service again end up looking very much like what we offer Comcast or AT & T.

The economic logic of TV business could be especially hard for Intel. It does not have the underlying infrastructure to deliver broadband content, so it can not attract customers packaging television and Internet services like Google has done with its experimental fiber network in Kansas City gigabits (USA). And if you get innovative negotiate the content, other companies such as Apple, that unlike Intel hardware has already placed television in people’s homes and maintains billing and customer service to consumers, can overtake on the right and sign similar agreements.

Intel

succeed, its aggressive entry into the living rooms should be programmed to perfection. TV programmers begin to experiment with new formats via the Web and mobile broadcast, and want to attract a new younger audience who still likes to watch TV but you might not want to do it on his couch every Tuesday at eight in the night.

When DirectTV satellite service launched a decade ago, it worked because it was spending billions of dollars on getting exclusive rights to many games of the football league, the NFL. Although not yet announced content agreements, Intel service is already being tested internally and with some limited partners, and are expected to be introduced this year. Intel may need its own version of the NFL.