• Business Insider, Thursday, March 24, 2011 12:15 PM

Suggesting to Business Insider that Microsoft is working on an answer to Google TV and Apple TV, the software giant just put a "hardware veteran" in charge of its interactive TV business. Tom Gibbons, headed Microsoft Hardware before joining the Windows Phone team in 2009, was just recently given the new title of corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's TV and Service business.

"Microsoft has been rumored to be working on some sort of new TV or video service since last fall," BI reports. One unconfirmed report said the devices would run the Windows Embedded operating system overlaid with the Media Center interface and start around $200. "With Gibbons now leading the charge, the company is probably trying to find hardware partners to build boxes to run the service -- just like it did with Windows Phone 7." On the Windows Phone team, Gibbons led the group that oversaw hardware reference designs for the Windows Phone 7 handsets.

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