Google and Samsung sought to stake out their claims to dominate the market for software that powers internet-connected television at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The duelling announcements intensified a new tech rivalry as the “internet of things” picked apart the close partnership the two companies have used to rule the smartphone market in recent years.
The US technology group announced that Android TV, its latest attempt to break into smart TV software after the flop of its initial Google TV technology, will be shipped on sets made by three manufacturers early this year — Sony, Sharp and TP Vision, the former TV division of Philips.
Reinforcing its deepening alliance with Google in living room technology, Sony also said it would sell speakers embedded with Google Cast, enabling users to stream music direct to speakers. Google’s Cast technology was first developed to stream video to TVs, but the company announced partnerships this week to extend it to music, rivalling Apple’s Airplay technology.
Meanwhile, Samsung highlighted plans to put its Tizen operating system on all of the internet-connected TVs it makes this year. The software was first developed for smartphones as a way to reduce Samsung’s reliance on Google’s Android operating system, but has yet to make a mark in the handset business.
Instead, it has been included in a number of other connected devices, including a version of Samsung’s Gear smartwatch. But including Tizen in all its smart TVs marks the company’s first use of the technology in a mass-market device.
Compared with the smartphone world, which is dominated by Google and Apple, the nascent market for software for smart TVs has already become fragmented. LG, Samsung’s South Korean rival, laid out plans at CES to focus on its own smart TV software, the WebOS operating system it acquired from Hewlett-Packard in 2013.
But Samsung accounts for around a quarter of annual smart TV sales, according to Strategy Analytics, compared with the roughly 15 per cent market shares of LG and Sony.
The duelling announcements intensified a new tech rivalry as the “internet of things” picked apart the close partnership the two companies have used to rule the smartphone market in recent years.
The US technology group announced that Android TV, its latest attempt to break into smart TV software after the flop of its initial Google TV technology, will be shipped on sets made by three manufacturers early this year — Sony, Sharp and TP Vision, the former TV division of Philips.
Reinforcing its deepening alliance with Google in living room technology, Sony also said it would sell speakers embedded with Google Cast, enabling users to stream music direct to speakers. Google’s Cast technology was first developed to stream video to TVs, but the company announced partnerships this week to extend it to music, rivalling Apple’s Airplay technology.
Meanwhile, Samsung highlighted plans to put its Tizen operating system on all of the internet-connected TVs it makes this year. The software was first developed for smartphones as a way to reduce Samsung’s reliance on Google’s Android operating system, but has yet to make a mark in the handset business.
Instead, it has been included in a number of other connected devices, including a version of Samsung’s Gear smartwatch. But including Tizen in all its smart TVs marks the company’s first use of the technology in a mass-market device.
Compared with the smartphone world, which is dominated by Google and Apple, the nascent market for software for smart TVs has already become fragmented. LG, Samsung’s South Korean rival, laid out plans at CES to focus on its own smart TV software, the WebOS operating system it acquired from Hewlett-Packard in 2013.
But Samsung accounts for around a quarter of annual smart TV sales, according to Strategy Analytics, compared with the roughly 15 per cent market shares of LG and Sony.
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