Intel share price: Liberty Global said to have interest in Web-TV service

Liberty Global Plc, the European cable operator controlled by John Malone, is in talks with Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC) to purchase the chipmaker’s Web-TV unit, Bloomberg reported today, citing three unnamed sources. The news follows reports last month that the Santa Clara-based hardware giant was in discussions with Verizon Communications Inc over the potential sale of the business.

In today’s pre-market trading, Intel shares were 0.74 percent lower at $23.99 as of 13:42 UTC. Trade these shares now through Hargreaves Lansdown from £5.95 per deal.

OnCue

Intel has been working on an online pay-TV service called OnCue for at least a year, and announced plans in February to deliver the service by the end of 2013. The move was surprising as it does not have a background in media. The company, however, has not managed to secure deals with media companies, and has decided to scale back its involvement in the project.

According to Bloomberg, it has started looking for potential partners with an established base of Internet subscribers or rights to films and television shows.

London-based Liberty Global is said to be interested in the system. According to one of the sources cited by Bloomberg, the group intends to use the service outside the US, as the company’s operations are primarily based in Europe, including Virgin media in the UK.

Liberty Global is the second company to be recently linked with Intel’s service. The chipmaker was said to be in talks, last month, to sell the project to Verizon Communications . Verizon has a conventional pay-TV service with more than five million subscribers and provides broadband access to nearly six million subscribers, and seems more suited towards operating the service than the semiconductor maker.

Mobile

Intel had launched the OnCue project in a bid to find fresh revenue streams, but the company’s Chief Executive Officer Brian M. Krzanich, appointed in May, has decided to focus on selling more processors for mobile devices. Intel is the largest producer of chips for the PC market, but the company has failed to achieve the same success in mobile, where it trails behind the dominant players such as Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics.

As of 14:43UTC buy Intel shares at $24.08.

As of 15:43 UTC sell Intel shares at $24.06.