has already established their name in Italy, we see that introducing WebTV as being very favorable. We feel that Philips should form an alliance with a local Internet Service Provider, such as, Infostrada to help market its product.OVERALL RATING AND OPINIONPLAYWEB was the first to be introduced in Italy, we feel that this can be an attractive market for Philips because of the lack of market saturation and maturity. Lack of competition adds another positive aspect for Philip's WebTV. There currently are no barriers to keep new entrants from the market and costs of substitute product are high. The overall assessment of Philip's WebTV going into Italy is favorable. COMPETITOR ANALYSISIDENTIFACATION OF COMPETITORSThe main world competitors of the licensed Web TV are Philips, Sony, Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Panasonic (Matsu*censored*a). These companies are major worldwide competitors in many different markets and span many different products. They all compete in the set- top- box arena globally. There exist no Italian producers of WEB TV. However there does exist European, American, and Italian firms that compete in or sell a set top box in Italy. These companies include NetGem, Telecom Italia (Play WEB), WebSurfer, Network Computer (an Oracle and Intel joint venture), Motorola, and Samsung. All of these competitors do not have the “WEB TV” but have either analog or digital set top boxes that connect to the web via a TV and telephone line, cable, or satellite. In this realm of living room web surfing there are many substitute products and many are already in the pipeline to be rolled out. The first substitute product of course is the personal computer with a modem. The computer companies are an obvious substitute but they are more an alternate solution. Many companies produce these computers; IBM, Hewlett Packard, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and a host of others. The other substitute products that are actually fighting o...
