Samsung is in the final stages of negotiation with Google over a partnership for their Smart TV’s. The partnership will provide Samsung with the software (Android I suspect) to power their Smart TV’s. It would also ensure that Samsung does not lose market share against LG who will launch a “Google TV” at CES in 2012.
Eric Schmidt was in South East Asia recently and met with both Samsung and LG regarding Android. It is pretty clear that Samsung want to incorporate the technology to further entrench themselves as the preferred Android partner to Google over the other manufacturers. Google would like to compete with Apple in the TV software environment but lost badly with the first version of the Google TV.
The first Google TV was made by a joint partnership between Google, Sony and Logitech but the product struggled to gain any traction with users due to its very high cost. Logitech made significant losses (tens of millions of dollars) due to the market not being ready for a “Smart TV”. I think that this might be a product for early adopters but I cannot see mainstream adoption of an Android powered TV. Surely being able to use social media on your big screen TV might be novel at first but be irritating over a long period of time. Needless to say, one would need incredibly fast internet to be able to use this Smart TV properly.
Google has not made it public how many users they have had using the first generation Google TV. Sony and Logitech have made losses due to the first generation Google TV, so why would Samsung be so willing to partner with Google? Do you really want to use social media on your LED TV / LCD TV? Distractions through status updates etc would ruin a good movie, right?
