PluggedIn: TV Shoppers Get New Education in Microchips
Sat January 17, 2004 09:29 PM ET
reuters.com
By Daniel Sorid
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Chip makers have long had a major marketing dilemma: everyone loves cool gadgets, but few care to know whose microchip, whether it be a signal processor or power amplifier, gives life to the device.
To all but truly devoted geeks, circuits are simply far too complicated to be interesting. Unless, that is, the chip is a microdisplay, chips used in a new breed of thin televisions.
Choosing a television used to be as easy as picking your favorite brand -- say Sony, Philips or Panasonic -- and then picking a size -- 19-inch, 27-inch, or bigger.
Today, microdisplays are complicating the process, and it's becoming well worth it for TV shoppers to do some research -- you could call it homework -- on the semiconductor technologies that have already reshaped the marketing of television.
Not since the "Intel Inside" stickers that signal the microprocessor used in personal computers has a chip technology become such a key consumer marketing tool.
Microdisplays, as their name suggests, are tiny video displays whose images can be blown up to fill a big-screen television screen. TVs built with microdisplays are expensive, but they're considerably cheaper than plasma-based television sets.
The most popular microdisplay technology in the market today is the digital light processor, a technology owned by Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , whose name has a stronger association with calculators than fancy TVs.
A DLP, as the technology is called, is really a collection of more than a million microscopic mirrors atop a chip, each mirror reflecting light in a particular way. The end result is a brilliant, bright display that can -- and has -- made digital movies more crisp and big TV sets easier on the eyes and the wallet.
Perhaps the real magic behind DLP is that Texas Instruments has succeeded in turning the technology into a veritable brand name. The DLP name can't be missed inside the TV sections of stores like Circuit City, where TVs from companies like Samsung proudly share their name with TI's technology.
Customers at such stores are actually asking for DLP televisions by name.
"We make the best picture in the world," said John Reder, manager of Texas Instruments' DLP television business. "So I think when one of our partner companies carriers the DLP logo on the front, that adds value to their brand and their products."
TI's success with educating the public about its DLP brand marks a shift in the way televisions are marketed, giving a public face to the underlying technology behind the television, said Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, a display research firm.
"TI has spent a ton of money building that DLP brand, reinforcing from digital cinema right down to those rear projection TVs," Chinnock said. "The TV does get marketed as a DLP TV and not just as a Samsung TV."
Chinnock said other chip makers could get into the game, shaking the foundation of a television business that has to date been dominated by a handful of well-known consumer electronics brands.
Most likely to next make a grand marketing push is Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , the company that practically invented the art of turning an utterly mind-boggling technology -- the computer microprocessor -- into one of the most valuable brands in technology.
Few PC ads lack the "Intel Inside" logo on advertisements, and the Pentium brand has become practically synonymous with personal computing.
Another entrant is Philips, with a line of chips it calls Cineos, and which are marketed as the "new face" of high-definition television.
Last week, Intel introduced its first line of microdisplays, using a rival technology to TI's DLP that the world's largest chip maker has codenamed Cayley. Cayley is based on a technology known as liquid crystal on silicon, a microdisplay that combines a silicon chip with a liquid crystal layer.
Sets based on Cayley were displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, and Chinnock said they looked great.
While an Intel spokesperson declined to comment on the company's marketing plans for television chips, few doubt Intel's abilities to turn a chip into a big brand.
Chinnock said any companies hoping to succeed in marketing TV chips directly to consumers would do well to take a page from the marketing campaign of Texas Instruments, which spent years and lots of money investing in the brand.
Intel, however, may be a victim of its own success, Chinnock said.
"I think probably today it might be easier to sell a Sony TV or a Philips, as opposed to a Cineos TV or an Intel TV," he said. "If you saw a TV that said 'Intel Inside', unless you've been educated, what does that mean to you? You're going to think it's a computer TV." |
