There have been lots of rumblings about Microsoft possibly selling their MediaRoom division to Ericsson. I think this move would make lots of sense for Microsoft for two big reasons.
1. The revenue of XBox sales and licensing (X-Box Live, etc.) dwarf the potential and existing revenue from sales of MediaRoom systems. Other middleware systems rightfully view Microsoft with a skeptical eye when it comes to integrating X-Box into their ecosystems as a set top box replacement or alternative - selling the division takes away this potential conflict. Same is true of their relationship with ATT U-verse - other MSO's may be more willing to work with X-Boxes as STB replacements when they know Microsoft is out of the "helping U-Verse" business.
2. I always believed that the architecture of MediaRoom was fatally flawed to begin with. Each stream or source has to be first "ingested" by MediaRoom before it can be presented to an end user. Even though the server footprint has been shrinking these past years it is still a massive investment and with adaptive bitrate it gets even worse.
And Dish may buy Aereo. Even bigger impact.
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