The race to win the future's living room is on, with major television manufacturers such as Samsung and LG putting faster chips running more apps into their televisions, and tech companies like Apple and Google eyeing the TV market. But some wonder if the winner might not be who we expect.
Analysts, including Andrew Tonner at the Motley Fool, have been watching with great interest as Intel, the world's leading PC processor manufacturer, has offered hints of a big push outside its usual comfort area.
Intel has spent the past 20 years taking market share from former giants who made their own processors while holding off competition from companies like AMD. But do those companies have what it takes to conquer the smart TV market?
Tonner details his analysis in the Fool's costly premium report, but here's the free version:
Intel announced earlier this year that it was in the process of negotiating with cable television's content providers to offer some form of what cable subscribers have been clamoring after for years: channel by channel cable service, in which you only buy the channels you want.
The talk at the time was that the service would launch this spring.
Those reports turned out to be a little premature, as Intel has remained stuck in the same trap that has caught up many who have gone before — stubborn cable content providers that rely on bundling to use profitable television networks to finance the most widely watched channels.
Intel has still insisted that whatever they have come up with will be released sometime this year.
Intel better hope to get it out soon, since the biggest advantage an innovative platform such as it proposes would be the novelty factor, and that could quickly be claimed by one of the many other would-be kings of Smart TV who are lurking in the shadows, expected to pounce some time this year.
Can Intel pull it off? Its investors hope so. With the mobile world taking off and tablets and smartphones stealing more and more users from the PC market every day, Intel has got to be thinking about preserving its dominant place in the industry. Whether Smart TVs will do it depends on Intel's own team, the cable providers and the competition already on the market, and around the corner, from LG, Samsung, Apple and Google.
