Lord Sugar: Youview to Launch Before Olympics

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Friday, 29 June 2012 09:56

YouView is to launch before the London Olympics according to reports in the Financial Times, cheekily titled, YouView limps to Olympic launch.

According to the report, the YouView board made up of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Cisco, Humax, Technicolor, BT and Arqiva are going to launch the service on July 4th as the project moves to a second phase of public trials. Lord Sugar tweeted the news first.

I guess I can eat my socks since I wrote the article Youview - You Blew It in April 2012! Or maybe Ian Maude, an analyst at Enders, should eat my socks for pontificating that it would not make it!

In May 2012, RapidTV News reported that internal trials of the YouView set-top box had concluded and the service would now see testing among a broader viewing audience comprising some 350 UK homes. At the time the consortium claimed that it had received hundreds of requests from people wanting to try out its box, which is likely to cost around £200 at launch.

VideoNet Editor John Moulding feels Youview really has wheels - mainly due to his theory that it will be widely adopted by Baby Boomers who are retiring and want a trusted brand.

He's right I think. But priced at £200 in a market that has an array of alternatives ranging from free to half the price, it's not going to be an easy sell to the Millennials (Generation Y) who are a much larger and much more tech savvy demographic than the retirees.