The world's largest chipmaker and one of the world's largest media companies are teaming up to develop technology for downloading and sharing films, music, and games from the Web.
Intel and Arvato, the latter a unit of Bertelsmann–whose Sony BMG is the world's second largest music label–have a new deal in which Intel makes its chips for computers, notebooks, and cell phones compatible to Bertelsmann's new online media file-sharing platform, the two companies said earlier this week.
"One of the major environmental changes in the electronics industry is this convergence—a combination of computing, communications, and content," said Intel chief executive Craig Barrett in a telephone interview to news wire services March 30. "This thing we call the digital home really is the combination of all three of those things."
The move represents part of an Intel strategy to move the company beyond its presence in the personal computer world and to gain a bigger share of the $200 billion consumer electronics industry.
Arvato announced their new Net platform a week earlier, called GNAB, allowing those who make and distribute music, movies, games, and ring tones to offer legal downloads of large files to clients under those clients' own brands, Bertelsmann said.
