GE & Tautung TV: Connecting Brands, Content and Technology

One of the big business and technology stories today was about the joint venture announcement between General Electric and Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer Tautung to market LCD TVs next year in the U.S. As the story goes, this is not just some effort to bank on the GE brand name. This appears to be a real strategic effort to leverage content generated by GE-owned NBC with the Internet and the hardware technology capabilities of Tautung. One can only imagine the wining and dining that went on at the recent Beijing Olympics to get this deal done.

Now GE is not the first American company to lend its well known and highly regarded brand name. In fact GE has done this many times before, like the GE licensed brand consumer products from Jasco, for instance. The model of the US brand selling products designed and manufactured in Asia is so well established that its hardly worth mentioning.

But in this case for GE and Tautung, their is something potentially very exciting and startling - perhaps the birth of a new unified hardware, software and services platform similar to the Xbox, Playstation, Wii, iPod/iPhone/iTunes and Blackberry complete systems.

Let's face it. The advancement of digital flat panel and HDTV hardware has reached its destination. Most TVs selling today feature full 1080P HDTV resolution capability, at affordable prices and in nearly every shape and size desired by the home owner. We're "Inside the Tornado" as Geoffrey A. Moore author of Crossing the Chasm would say, and brands are just shipping them as fast as consumers can buy them in anticipation of the April 2009 end to broadcast Analog TV (see my blog on the Myth of Switch to Analog TV)

The smart strategic marketers and technologists are already looking way beyond the basic hardware technology needed for producing high quality digital, High Definition TV. They've seen the power of the Internet and the availability of video content from the likes of Hulu (owned by NBC, gasp), Joost, Veoh, iTunes, etc. And they've also embraced the power of the Internet as a distribution source in parallel with TV broadcasting, witness the success of NBC's online Beijing Olympic coverage at www.nbcolympics.com

In case you missed it, NBC stepped up to the plate big time with thousands of hours of live and recorded coverage available for free 24/7. Check out some of the NBC Olympics viewer stats and you will see that for global megaconglomerate coporations like GE and Tautung that have to plan for new business by the billions, the Internet is more than a sufficient medium for harnessing multi-billion dollar growth.

And this is precisely what GE appears to be doing -- putting the pieces together to deliver a complete value proposition including the brand, the expanded content source of the Internet, the underlying connectivity technology and, I predict, the service to deliver consumers a complete experience via their TV. It is the natural progression for digital TV - connecting the hardware with the various sources available is what its always been about.

If you aren't sure what I mean, ask yourself if you would prefer to watch a TV show sitting in front of your PC screen or in front of your home hearth with your superslim, supersexy, mine's bigger than yours, eye-candy digital HD TV.