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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sly_ who wrote (28820)	8/28/1999 1:30:00 PM
From: Ian Davidson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

From the WSJ: August 27, 1999 Microsoft, Thomson Create Venture To Develop Interactive TV Services Dow Jones Newswires PARIS -- French state-owned consumer-electronics company Thomson Multimedia SA and Microsoft Corp. have created a joint venture to develop interactive services on television, the companies said Friday. The venture, called TAK, will be 30%-owned by Microsoft and 70%-owned by Thomson Multimedia. Total capital will be 12 million euros ($12.54 million). TAK will help broadcasters "anticipate the evolution of full digital television and the Internet," Thomson Multimedia and Microsoft said. Interactive television allows viewers to use their remote controls to do things like follow up with advertisers. By some estimates, interactive television will be available to almost 70 million people in Europe and the U.S. by 2003, a projected growth rate of about 45% a year. The creation of TAK follows an agreement signed in July 1998 by Microsoft and Thomson Multimedia, a unit of French holding company Thomson SA, to foster cooperation in interactive television. The French government has said that it plans to float part of the company through a capital increase, after which the government will retain a majority stake. It currently holds a 67% stake, having in 1998 sold 7.5% stakes to Microsoft, French telecommunications-equipment supplier Alcatel SA, Japanese computer maker NEC Corp. and DirectTV, a unit of Hughes Electronics of the U.S. Thomson Multimedia unit RCA will begin selling WebTV receivers this fall, but executives earlier this month said they would delay until next year the rollout of a TV with built-in WebTV capabilities. With a built-in, all-in-one product, RCA hoped to leapfrog Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands and Japan's Sony Corp., the leading makers of WebTV receivers, in connecting televisions to the Internet. Instead, RCA will offer a stand-alone WebTV Plus receiver. RCA executives said they decided to wait until after Microsoft, owner of the WebTV technology, finishes an overhaul of WebTV's technical structure so that it can be based on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft expects to complete the change late this year to permit the newer, WebTV Plus devices to be upgraded to a future version of Windows CE with interactive-TV-oriented features. Today, Windows CE is primarily used in pocket-size computers.