Here's a good article on MSFT:
Net draws users to interactive TV in U.K., says Microsoft
By Bloomberg News
Special to CNET News.com
July 15, 1999, 11:00 a.m. PT
Microsoft said its tests of WebTV in U.K. homes suggest that the ability to use the Internet through a television set is the biggest attraction for users to adopt interactive TV.
The trials conducted over six months showed three-quarters of the 115 homes involved found access to the Internet through TV to be useful, and a third cited it as the one factor that would lead them to buy an interactive television. It also revealed interactive games to be the most popular feature and concerns about security to be the biggest barrier to shopping online.
Microsoft is intensifying its efforts to push WebTV in Western Europe, where an estimated 17 percent, or 26 million homes, will be online by the end of this year. WebTV, which Microsoft acquired in 1997, provides the company with a means of extending its Internet presence access outside its mainstay personal-computer business. It is already used by more than 700,000 U.S. households.
"We are talking with various cable and satellite TV operators to incorporate the service in their desktops," said Sharon Baylay, marketing manager for the unit renamed Microsoft TV in Europe, in an interview.
Microsoft is in talks with cable and satellite operators such as United Pan-Europe Communications, Europe's second- largest cable TV company, she said. Microsoft has a stake in UPC, as well as in TV Cabo, Portugal Telecom's cable and satellite TV unit, and U.K. cable companies Telewest Communications and NTL.
Teflon |
