On Tuesday this week at its 11th annual CEO Summit in Huntington Beach, California, Intel Capital, announced 18 new investments totaling $77 million in funding. That brings the total investment for 2010 to $247 million, slightly less than the $327 million the chip giant’s global investment organization made last year, said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president. The criterion for these investments is to increase demand for the compute continuum that is at the core of Intel Corp. business strategy.
The investments this year spanned the hot technologies of the being bandied about the worldwide technology community: cloud computing, green tech, mobile Internet, digital home, consumer Internet, software services, and chip manufacturing. Of these technologies, the buzzword that is currently making the rounds is Internet TV.
Sodhani suggested the Internet connected TV when asked what the theme for the event next year might be. The wisdom of this suggestion is supported by a Yankee Group study this year of more than 6,000 U.S. consumers. The market research firm’s findings suggest that “one in eight consumers will eliminate or scale back their cable, satellite or other pay-TV service this year.” With 100 million cable/satellite/telco subscribers at the moment, that could mean 12.5 million are going to reduce or cut their service in the next 12 months. The presumption is that these cord cutters will end up watching video over the Internet.
Intel Capital’s investment in Verismo Networks’ of Mountain View, Calif. and Bangalore is one of its Internet TV plays. Verismo is developing an open Internet TV platform. The platform seamlessly converges IPTV linear channels, Internet video, social networking and personal media for playback directly to the TV. Service providers provide a set-top box that provides cable TV content as well as video content from the Internet.
Another example is Althea Systems based in Bangalore, India. Althea’s Shufflr, a social video browser, works with cloud-based Shufflr's video discovery platform sold to service providers. The solution makes it easier to find and share online videos across various devices. The software on the cloud aggregates video from several sources and combines machine aided and social discovery engines to help users locate video. Coming soon on smartphones, tablets and TVs, Shufflr will provide a continuity of video experience from one device to another.
However, Sodhani set his portfolio companies the formidable challenge of solving the end consumers’ problem of being able to access video content any place at any time on any device. Foster City, California-base Sling Media, Inc., an affiliate of EchoStar Corp. addressed the problem of place and time shifting by moving content from the consumers’ TV to his PC and cell phone. The tricky part is getting the Internet content onto the TV. The easy part is getting YouTube on TV. The difficult part is getting broadcast and cable TV content on-demand over the Internet. This problem has little to do with technology and everything to do with monetization.
Can Intel and its portfolio companies solve this conundrum. Verismo Networks suggest a solution that might work for India but might not in the U.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOFU7dros_o&feature=player_embedded
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