IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Intel, Microsoft promote digital home

Longtime partners Microsoft and Intel are for the first time running a joint advertising campaign to push their notion of the digital home.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp., which together have dominated the personal computer industry since the early 1980s, are for the first time running a joint advertising campaign to push their notion of the digital home.

The TV, online, newspaper and movie campaign, which starts Sunday, will show off how entertainment PCs can be used to view photos, listen to music and watch video throughout the home, not just the den or bedroom where computers are traditionally found.

Intel said the campaign will cost in the "low tens of millions" of dollars and the cost will be split evenly with Microsoft.

"We're going directly to the consumers on this," said Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman. "It's definitely an acknowledgment we both view the digital home as critical to our success, and it requires some level of consumer education."

In the early 1980s, Microsoft's operating system and Intel's microprocessors were established as the leading components in IBM Corp.'s first personal computer. Both still dominate today, despite complaints of anticompetitive behavior and increasing rivalry. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

Even with their combined success, the so-called WinTel duopoly has never produced a joint ad campaign before.

The companies will set up "experience zones" at shopping malls in 38 cities so that potential customers can check out the systems.