With a quarter of global TVs sold in 2012 Smart TVs, there are new opportunities for cloud gaming and app gaming on these connected devices.
Proprietary impropriety
Even so, the proliferation of proprietary smart TV platforms has caused fragmentation and created problems for the developers of television apps.
TV manufacturers LG Electronics, TP Vision—for Philips TVs—and Toshiba founded the Smart TV Alliance in June 2012, to allow developers to create apps using open standard systems that can successfully run on all the platforms supported by the alliance. Panasonic joined the alliance in January 2013, and more companies are expected to sign up in the future.
Smart ideas
An emerging trend of “smart-ready” TV models has come about through the partnership announced by Roku during the Consumer Electronics Show in January with several TV manufacturers, including Coby, Hisense, TCL and Westinghouse. Using the smart-ready approach, any television enabled with a mobile high-definition link (MHL) can be turned into a smart TV using a Roku Streaming Stick. These types of partnerships are highly valuable to second- and third-tier brands that wish to compete in the smart TV market.
For its part, Google TV has made some improvements since it was first launched in the market, more recently adding voice search and a new TV guide called PrimeTime. However, this has yet to resonate with consumers.
Sony released the first Google TV set in 2010, but now only sells it as a separate box, similar to the Vizio Co-Star and the Hisense Pulse. LG Electronics continues to offer smart TVs with Google TV, first introduced in 2012, on screen sizes ranging from 42 inches to 60 inches.
