Gadget Mystery! Who's Building Netflix Streaming Boxes? (NFLX)
Dan Frommer | April 22, 2008 5:30 PM
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is a tease. During the company's Q1 earnings call last night, he let loose a sexy factoid: Netflix (NFLX) is working with four partners on gadgets to play its digital movie streams on your TV. The problem: He only named one, LG, which we've known about for months.
So who are the other three? We won't pretend to know yet, but while we poke around, we'd love to hear your guesses. First, some hints from yesterday's call, courtesy Seeking Alpha's transcript.
In particular, we want our client software integrated into Internet connected Blu-Ray players, game consoles, TVs, and standalone set-top devices.
In January, we told you we were working with LG Electronics for a second half of 2008 product launch. At this point, I can tell you we have LG plus three additional partners actively working on integrating our technology into their products.
Three of the four partners are major companies which each sell millions of devices per year and will enable the Netflix functionality in some of those devices likely in Q4 of this year.
The fourth partner is a small company with which -- which will likely launch sooner than Q4.
We still think Microsoft (MSFT) is the most likely videogame console partner: Because Netflix already uses Microsoft's DRM software for its movie streams, it should be easy to shoe-horn into the Xbox 360. As far as the other categories... we're all ears. |
