Google Inc, Intel Corp and Sony Corp unveiled “Google TV” on Thursday in the latest effort to marry the Web to television and reach into the US$70 billion television advertising market.
The attempt to bring the Internet into living rooms has frustrated virtually every major player in the technology and consumer electronics industry for years, from Microsoft Corp to Google’s new archrival Apple Inc, which was the focus of frequent verbal jabs and jokes.
Television represents an attractive market in which to expand Google’s Internet advertising business, which generated the bulk of its US$23.7 billion revenue last year, but so far a successful formula has proved elusive.
Google’s main focus was to integrate an Internet-style search box into sets which could then look for video and other information on television as well as the Web.
Sony will build devices to launch in the fall — in time for this year’s holiday buying season — with Intel providing its small Atom processors to run machines.
For Sony, whose dominance in electronics has been eroded by the likes of Samsung Electronics, the effort helps it get ahead of rivals in developing a new generation of devices.
“Video should be consumed on the biggest, best and brightest screen in the house. And that’s a TV. It’s not a PC or a phone or anything else in between,” Google project senior product manager Rishi Chandra said.
Best Buy Co Inc will sell devices and DISH Network TV will integrate its service into Google TV. Chief executives from those companies, as well as Google, Sony, Intel and Adobe Systems Inc, all went on stage at Google’s developers conference for the announcement.
The effort is hardly a sure thing, based on the track record of other high-profile attempts.
Executives said previous efforts had failed because they dumbed down the Web for television, were closed to participation by others and made people choose between using the Web or television.
“It’s much harder to marry a 50-year-old technology and a brand new technology than those of us in the brand new technology industry thought,” Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said to the audience of developers.
Portending the potential speed and bandwidth limitations of such a device, embarrassed Google engineers struggled initially to get their TV up and running, and had to ask their audience to turn off their cellphones, which were interfering with Google TV remote controls.
Google’s increasingly tense relationship with Apple was clear throughout the conference. Engineers showed off new versions of the Android mobile phone platform, which will also run Google TV and which competes directly with Apple’s iPhone.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the