Here's the article. By the way, does anyone know if Zenith will be the
first out to the market this fall with this Web TV ? Have there been
similar announcements by competitors ?.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Zenith Electronics Corp. announced Thursday that through a
partnership with Diba Inc. it planned to market by October a television equipped with both
a high-speed modem and an Ethernet connection to make it possible to connect easily to the
Internet without the expense of a personal computer.
Diba is a small Silicon Valley company that designs software and hardware to make it possible
for television viewers to browse the Internet.
Zenith has been one of the most recent beneficiaries of the high expectations surrounding the
booming Internet marketplace. Monday, the company's shares leaped $7.125, to $22.875, on the
New York Stock Exchange. During the previous six trading days, Zenith had climbed $16.75, or
273 percent, on volume of more than 47 million shares.
The boom in the company stock price was linked to announcements that Zenith planned to enter
the Internet cable modem business, which would permit personal computer users to connect to
the Internet via cable networks. Thursday, however, the shares fell $1.375, to close at $17.375.
Zenith, of Glenview, Ill., which is ranked number two among television manufacturers in the
United States, said Thursday that this fall it would offer for as little as $899 a 27-inch television
set equipped with a high-speed modem and an Ethernet connection.
Such a product would be far less expensive than a competing system now being offered by
Gateway 2000, one of the nation's largest personal computer mail-order companies. The new
Gateway Web TV personal computer is designed around a 31-inch monitor, is priced at $3,500
to $4,000 and is also customized for connecting to the Internet.
The contrast between the Gateway and Zenith approaches highlights a bitter debate in the
computer industry over whether it is possible to design simpler, less expensive systems than
personal computers to offer video, entertainment and information services over the Internet as
well as some simple features like electronic mail and word processing.
"What Gateway did was add a tuner to a personal computer," said Albin F. Moschner, Zenith's
president and chief executive officer. "We think we're taking a more cost effective approach,
and we think this is easier to use."
If the low-cost systems take off, they could prove damaging to the personal computer industry,
which has argued that adding computing to televisions would fail because the devices lack
high-resolution screens and disk storage.
However, a number of industry analysts see a significant market for devices that offer Internet
services without the complexity of today's personal computers.
"We'll see several such devices on the market by fall," said Richard Shaffer, editor of the
Technologic Partners Computerletter, an industry publication. "It's not a replacement for a PC,
but you will be able to do a variety of useful things."
Diba, a small start-up company based in Belmont, Calif., was founded recently by a former
employee of Oracle Corp. Diba has come up with a variety of designs for what it calls
telephone- and television-based Internet "appliances."
It has also written a custom software browser and developed specialized hardware to sharpen
the appearance of text on a television screen.
Diba is privately financed by Quark Inc., a Denver company that develops personal computer
software for the publishing market. |
