Tuesday, 16 August 2011

Google now has Settop boxes!

Google has just proposed to buy Motorola Mobility, the division which sells cell phones and settop boxes (STB), for US$12.5 billion, both for the business and the strong patent portfolio. Most of the discussion so far has been centered on the cell phone patent wars, but here I'll write a little about the TV implications. Some very useful stats and information is found here.

SingTel's MioTV has always been based on Microsoft's Mediaroom server solution, and the client set top boxes, were all from Motorola. The majority of the deployed boxes use the Sigma Designs chips, and some new boxes may be using the Broadcom solutions.

SingTel's not alone. Motorola sells their set STBs worldwide, and is the biggest supplier of STBs in the US, mostly powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom back-end IPTV server software. Microsoft has a little "panel" of STB manufacturers, very small numbers, including Motorola, Pace and Tatung. The biggest of which is Motorola. It takes ages for Microsoft to approve a box for use with Mediaroom, caused by a mix of bureaucratic, technical, political and resource issues.

Now that Google has bought Motorola Mobility, this is not a really good thing for Microsoft--one of its main STB partners just owned by the enemy. Google's always pushed their free Android operating system for the Google TV boxes which play over-the-top Internet TV content. Now that Motorola's with Google, for sure its STBs will include Android offerings, and that's poison to Microsoft. And with Google's openness compared to Microsoft's proprietary Mediaroom structure, you can be sure that Googlerola will aggressively and rapidly add further support for other video server solutions.

Whatever it is, IPTV is probably poised to be more open at least for half the IPTV world.