Intel loses key TV business engineer
Jim Baldwin, vice president and general manager of engineering for Intel Media, has left the company to pursue other opportunities.
Intel's fledgling TV business has lost one of its lead engineers, the company confirmed, potentially dealing a blow to its efforts to get the business off the ground.
Jim Baldwin, who served as vice president and general manager of engineering for Intel Media, has left the company to pursue other opportunities, an Intel spokesman said. Baldwin's LinkedIn profile, meanwhile, said he has retired from the company.
Baldwin couldn't immediately be reached for comment. The Intel spokesman said that the company has "a deep engineering leadership bench" and has taken steps internally to address the transition. "There are no changes to our plans for 2013," he said.
Baldwin joined Intel from Microsoft in October 2011 as part of the chip giant's push to hire talent with experience in the TV business. Intel noted on its Web site that Baldwin was "responsible for defining Intel's vision for connected product and services in the living room, bringing together engineering and user experience teams to build products, services, and world-class user experience throughout."
Intel has pretty ambitious efforts in the Internet-based TV business. The company plans to launch hardware and software later this year that let users watch live TV, on-demand, and other content in their homes andon mobile devices. The company faces many hurdles with the service, such as signing content deals, but it has said the product would launch later this year.Losing a key engineer could prove to be a setback for Intel as it gets ready to release its hardware and software. The company has provided few specifics about its efforts but is in the process of testing the product in employees' homes in three markets.
Before joining Intel, Baldwin served as chief technology officer for television, video, and music at Microsoft and engineering director for Microsoft's Mediaroom business. In his role at Microsoft, Baldwin was the technical strategist for the TV and video services platforms and also was responsible for developing Mediaroom from the initial idea to creation of the end-to-end user experience.
Microsoft earlier this month reached a deal to sell Mediaroom to Ericsson for slightly less than $200 million so it can focus its TV efforts on its Xbox gaming system.
(Via GigaOM).