Intel Concedes Smart TV Market to ARM

You win some and you lose some, is the way it goes in life, even for Intel. The Santa Clara chip maker stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the semiconductor market, but it doesn't win all of its battles. To wit, Intel is disbanding its Digital Home Group, which builds SoC Atom variants for smart TVs and other similar consumer electronics devices. Boxee Box and Google TV are both based on Intel's CE4100 Atom SoC.

"This was a tough decision; Intel led the creation and launch of the smart TV category and its first products," an Intel spokesperson told Gigaom.


Intel isn't abandoning CE devices altogether, only now it will refocus its efforts on pay TV set-top boxes, cable modems, and things of that nature. Those who worked at the DHG division are being transferred to a brand new tablet group. So what does this mean for Boxee and Google? Not much.

Boxee told Gigaom that it's "always been hardware agnostic," so switching to ARM isn't a big deal. On top of that, Intel still plans to sell and support Atom CE4100 chips, so current Boxee products won't vanish overnight. Google was equally dismissive, telling Gigaom that it will "continue to work with many chipset partners, including Intel, to bring new smart TV products to the market."