Janko Roettgers of GigaOm has dropped an interesting morsel of news on to the internet with his report that Intel has secret plan to launch a TV service to beat Apple. Roettgers claims that Intel is close to making its plans public but will probably not do it at CES. The company wants to revolutionize TV by beating the cable model and introducing ssubscriptions for single channels.
The GigaOm report claims that Intel will make an announcement in February about the TV platform. Currently there is an undercover team working on the project including some big industry players. Erik Huggers was previously in charge of the BBC’s iPlayer and is leading the chip makers TV efforts. There is design team located in London that is also working on the user interface. He has a very special team that includes former staff from Apple, Jawbone, and other top guns in the field. The setup is being called Intel Media and the report indicates that it might be made into a separate company.
According to Roettgers, Intel wants to give users a top box through which they can connect to the service and watch the channels on their TV. There are also plans for the delivery of content to mobile devices like Tablets and smartphones.
The GigaOm report may have some support as Kelly Clay reports in Forbes that Intel is going give users the option to bundle channels. That means a user can order individual channels of their choice and bundle them together instead of getting a pre-made package.
Roettgers does not seem convinced that Intel can actually deliver even though its has put $100 million into the TV services project. It seems Intel is looking at TV to provide revenue for the future and it may put more cash into its TV idea. Apple is also working on a TV model but Intel hopes to jump ahead in line. Intel thinks that the current Apple TV is not a viable option.Intel thinks that if they deliver the content in a way that resembles a normal TV viewing experience they will be a hit.
Source: Business Insider