Intel Outside?

Seeing Intel's recent blitz of advertising around their new Viiv platform got me thinking about the shift in how we receive our Television. Just as Centrino did for wireless, Intel hopes that Viiv will make media content, in all its forms, more accessible than ever. Viiv, which incorporates new hardware and software, including Intel's new dual core processor, represents a larger effort to bring together a mass of content and show it on a range of devices, including televisions and handhelds. To support the effort, Intel has partnered with prominent content providers like DirecTV, NBC, ESPN and others, who will make their video and audio content available to Viiv PC owners. As an example of what to expect, Intel is working with NBC to bring the Olympics to Viiv-enabled PCs and allow owners to create personal portals for viewing the games via its Web site, nbcolympics.com. Beyond the video realm, Intel is also partnering with AOL to deliver AOL Radio, AOL Pictures and, later this quarter, its AOL Music Service with over a million songs, to Viiv PC owners. As for what Viiv will actually look like, it’s boxes will come in numerous forms, ranging form standard desktop models, including towers and so-called small desktops to DVD-like models that will fit neatly into the living room entertainment center. The first versions are already on the market and digitally-inclined homeowners should expect to pay around $900. As for what Viiv actually means to Intel, last month’s loud earnings miss, which sent the stock down almost 15%, may be an indication that its time for strategic tinkering. To make matters worse, for the same quarter, rival AMD announced that it gained several points of market share in 2005. Forecasts for 2006 are not much better, with a possibility that Intel may suffer an annual decline in earnings. Given that grim outlook, Viiv’s rich set of content-based alliances may be an effort to shift the rules of the micro-processing game away from what’s inside to what’s outside on the screen.