Monday, November 21, 2005

Mon - Cisco and Sciantific-Atlanta

Well, I guess everyone is after the living room. Microsoft are going in via two routes - the Xbox and the PC Media Centre, Apple are going in via the iPod and now Cisco are betting its the future by spending a whopping $6.9bn to buy Scietnific-Atlanta, the 2nd largest maker of set-top boxes for the cable industry.

And by linking up SA's set-top boxes with Cisco's Linksys wireless home router, you could conceivably hook up all your digital devices from the set-top box, so delivering cable to multiple TV's for example.

And SA gives Cisco access to the cable companies as they provide key back end sytems for them, but their latest set-top boxes also provide a digital video recorder, DVD player and burner. So, they could actually provide stiff competition for Microsoft's Madia Centre via the cable companies but direct to the consumer. This could prove the first time that Cisco goes up against Microsoft in a serious way.

So, the SA deal looks a shrewd one for Cisco. And our living rooms and houses are going to come seriously into play for yet another of Silicon Valleys most powerful players. Hang on to your TV's folks - they're about to get lit up big time!

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