According to a Reuters report, Intel Corp. on Thursday said it has scrapped plans to enter the digital television chip business, marking a retreat from a major component of its consumer electronics initiative. The cancellation, which follows a string of missteps by the world's largest chip maker, eliminates a major competitive threat faced by Texas Instruments' DLP technology.
In August, the first signs of trouble for the LCoS initiative surfaced. Intel indefinitely postponed the project, saying it had decided to improve picture quality before introducing the product. Top executives of Intel, in a recently completed review of its 2005 product plan, decided that resources dedicated to the LCoS project would be better shifted to extending the company's core computer chip business into consumer electronics products.
Apparently, fewer than 100 Intel employees were involved with the LCoS project (they will now be reassigned). It makes us wonder how they ever planned to take on the consumer television market when they apparently never fully committed themselves to the task in the first place.
