TV Applications Evolving in 2011

It's still early days but already it looks as though 2011 is set to be an important year for TV applications. There have already been several significant announcements following CES earlier this month. Samsung announced the two millionth download from its app store, which they say took just 53 days to reach. Although it took Samsung 268 days to reach its one millionth download, there is a clear benchmark that reflects the growing demand for TV apps.

Yahoo has also developed its widgets strategy by adding functionality that enables it to recognise programming. This enables broadcasters to develop and deliver content linked to what the consumer is watching, a prospect which is also naturally attractive to advertisers. It's something we're already familiar with in the European market with HbbTV services delivering similar functionality. At CES, Yahoo demonstrated multi-device connectivity, moving TV and widget content to and from a tablet device, something that Samsung also discussed during a keynote speech during the show.

Applications are fast evolving but content developers and service providers need to remain focused on the prime goal - to enhance the TV experience, not detract from it.

TV gets connected

As I mentioned at the beginning of the week, connected TV and 3D TV have been heavily featured at CES this year. Today I spent some time looking into the various connected TV’s on show. What’s immediately apparent is that there is a great deal of similarity between many of the devices. This raises an obvious question which relates back to one of the main reasons that TV manufactures added connectivity in the first place – differentiation. If they all feature the same content they’re back to square one.

There are some good examples of VoD services such as Netflix and LOVEFiLM, where the revenue stream is clear. However, it’s harder to see how Sudoku style games will excite the consumer and generate revenue for an app developer or device manufacturer. Yahoo was demonstrating perhaps the most complete solution, confirming that its business model will rely on ad funding, although this was the one area that was not demonstrated.

There is certainly widespread acceptance of connected TV from device manufacturers, which is good news for the consumer. It will be interesting to see which of the device manufacturers will publically disclose its sustainable business model first.

Yahoo lands full on TV Widgets

Yahoo has re-emerged with yet another strategically important partnership in the TV space, as it announced that it will be offering a TV Widget service in partnership with Samsung.

It was revealed that the service will be offered on Samsung’s new internet-connected HDTVs with content feeds from Yahoo! news channels and Flickr, where viewers will be able to browse news and photos on a large screen. The widget service will provide updates on localised content such as weather forecasts, the stock market and shares information.

With the emergence of large HDTVs, services like this will help content providers to push both existing and new content through easily accessible widgets in real time. However, whilst TV widgets can’t be interacted with in the same way as a PC or lap top, they will give new media content providers a great opportunity to tie the widget, or application, more closely to the content.

The real value of widget technology can be achieved when it’s extended to multiple devices from games consoles, to set-top boxes and mobile phones further enabling end-to-end peer interaction. Here at ANT we’ve already experimented with similar services on the STB and will be launching more in the future so watch this space!