Analysis

As Intel Exits the Digital Home Market…

21st December 2011
ES Admin
0
Recently, news came out about Intel’s decision to close its Digital Home business, basically abandoning its “smart TV” initiative. So with Intel out of the smart TV picture, what does this mean for the industry? Who is the processor winner? According to a recent article on VentureBeat (*), “A potential winner here is Mips, which has been designing chips for Android-based smart TVs.”
I read in a news article that Intel claims it “…led the creation and launch of the smart TV category and its first products.” This is quite a stretch! With its Atom-based CE4100 and CE4200 SoCs targeted at the digital home, Intel’s few major design wins, including the unsuccessful first generation of Google TV, were not for DTV per se. They were in reality over-the-top (OTT) IP set-top boxes—not connected DTV platforms. Even the Sony TV that was at the heart of the Google TV effort used a MIPS-Based SoC for the DTV functionality, with an Intel-based Google TV board connected to it.
Why? Ultimately, Intel is limited by the size and power consumption of its architecture.

Across the DTV category, MIPS Technologies provides the number one processor architecture. This includes DTVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and more. If we look at DTV in particular, MIPS licensees are shipping more units than any of our competitors into this market, with MIPS processors shipping inside of DTVs from LG, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, Vizio and other major brands.

Shipments of DTVs in the overall market are experiencing a relatively weak period right now, but the potential for the future is huge as home entertainment technologies proliferate into geographies where they were never before possible, and as smart TVs begin to gain a toehold.

According to a recent report (*) from IHS iSuppli, “During the next four years, DTV broadcast switchovers will occur in emerging regions such as Latin America, China and Asia-Pacific.” IHS iSuppli forecasts that the worldwide DTV market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent from 2010 to 2015, with annual shipments expected to reach 245.9 million units in 2015.

The firm goes on to point out that “In the wake of the TV market transition to digital comes the age of the ‘smart’ TV, with all major TV original equipment manufacturers offering new features and functionality via Internet connectivity to TV sets. IHS expects a transition to occur from digital to smart in order to offer similar opportunities to the TV semiconductor supply chain, just as digital has in the recent past.”

And while ‘smart’ DTV today represents only the ultra high-end of the DTV market, as the digital home processor leader, MIPS has been laying the groundwork for MIPS-Based smart connected entertainment for several years. Through our ‘Android on MIPS’ initiative, MIPS and our licensees announced the world’s first Android set-top boxes, and there are MIPS-Based Android TVs already shipping in the market.

MIPS is also positioned very well to support Google TV if future generations of this platform experience success. According to Google (*), Google TV will be based on Android 3.1 (also known as “Honeycomb”). MIPS already has Android Honeycomb running on several SoC devices and we will soon announce the shipment of end products. With that in mind, our licensees can easily support Google TV if they feel that the demand is there.

So clearly MIPS is in a strong position regardless of Intel’s decision to remain in this market or leave it. But as most of you know, MIPS and Intel are not the only processor games in town. How will MIPS win against other processor vendors targeting the digital home market, and DTV in particular?
As the incumbent in the digital home, we are starting from a position of strength. And as we have pointed out before, the MIPS architecture is more performance-efficient than the competition. This is particularly important in the DTV market where shrinking margins demand the highest possible performance at the lowest possible cost. With MIPS, our licensees get the best combination of performance, price and power. In addition, with the growing applications ecosystem around MIPS for mobile and smart digital home, we are well positioned to provide the solutions our customers need when smart TV moves from the ultra high-end into the mainstream.

By Kevin Kitagawa; Marketing Director Digital Home, MIPS Technologies

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