new Android phones were activated every day
If Google’s effort is successful, it could create problems for traditional cable companies, as more people could look to the wealth of content on the Internet and bypass their cable provider’s profitable video-on-demand offerings.
“The video-on-demand experience has always been antiquated at best,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG, a financial services firm. Google TV and similar efforts “put pressure squarely on cable operators and anyone in the business of distributing video content to improve their user experience.”
Google did not talk about its advertising strategy for Google TV, but it could use its formidable data-collection abilities to aim new types of ads at television-watching consumers. The company said users would have control over what information was shared with advertisers.
One advantage Google believes it has in courting other television manufacturers is the success of its Android platform for mobile phones — and the fact that TV makers like LG Electronics and Samsung already sell phones running Android. On Thursday, Google said that 100,000 new Android phones were activated every day, up from 60,000 in April — second in the industry only to phones from Research In Motion.
Google executives promoted the notion that Google seemed to have already surpassed its rival Apple in this respect, although Apple still has a far larger base of devices running the iPhone operating system. It recently reported that it had shipped 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches, and more than a million iPad tablet computers.
Apple could invest more in the TV business soon. It sells an Apple TV set-top box, which it deems a hobby and which most analysts view as a lackluster product. It would now make sense for Apple to update that product, adding a Blu-ray player, for example. Or Apple could offer its iTunes service to
Montreal canadiens other set-top box and TV makers, or manufacture its own flat-panel television that links to iTunes.
