It seems that the lucrative online TV industry is pulling a lot of unconventional contestants to the arena. With more and more users seeking entertainment through internet, the concept of an online TV is gaining traction and nearly all TV service providers are planning to couple their services with some sort of online access. It has now been learned that a very unlikely company, Intel, is also working on an online TV service.
This may come as a surprise to many since Intel is well known for making chips and entering the realm of online TV will be a huge paradigm shift for it. This has been revealed by the Wall Street Journal, Intel is planning to launch a web-based TV service. This service will compete with services from cable operators, phone companies and other satellite TV providers.
The exact model of such a service, as revealed by WSJ, is quite predictable. Intel will launch a set-top-box and the users will be able to access TV content via their broadband connections. Intel is also said to have developed a user interface of its own which will allow the users to browse programs.
Right now, a number of companies are aspiring for the online TV business and are hoping to get a chunk of it. With the online populace exploding dramatically and more and more users spending most of their time online, rather than on conventional TVs, there is a very lucrative market for the taking. And that is why the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon and now Intel seem to be trying to hard get into it.
Currently, the most successful among these well-known tech companies has been Amazon. Others have been very successful because the major problem is to get adequate content for the TV from the same content producers who don’t seem very eager to let go of their conventional revenue streams and try their hands at new ones. Nonetheless, with the pace at which technology is advancing and with more users flocking to online programming, content producers will sooner or later be forced to partner with these tech companies to offer their content to a larger audience.
Image courtesy huang.
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