Google TV: Five Burning Questions

Google, Intel, and Sony are reportedly banding together to produce a Web content platform for your living room called Google TV. The new platform would reportedly be available as a set-top box or as part of a Web-capable television. Google TV would be based on Google’s mobile operating system, Android, and would also include a version of the Chrome browser for using Web applications like Twitter or Picasa, Google’s online photo sharing and storage service, according to The New York Times.

The whole idea behind Google TV, the Times reports, is to create smartphone-like applications that make using the Web on your television as easy as changing the channel. Google hopes to encourage third-party developers to create apps for Google TV with the same enthusiasm they have for creating Android smartphone apps. In the coming months, Google will provide an application development toolkit for Google TV, and the Times says we could see Google TV-related products as early as this summer. It’s not clear how these apps will be distributed, but presumably, Google will offer some kind of online marketplace as it does for Android smartphones.

Device supremacy in the living room is something of a Holy Grail for technology companies. There are many set-top boxes on the market today that can stream online video from YouTube, rent premium video content, and browse the Web, such as the three major gaming consoles (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii), TiVo digital video recorders, Apple TV, and the Roku set-top box.

However, none of these products have been able to gain a significant enough user base to be declared the preferred living room device where you can view your online and physical content, such as DVDs, in one place. Will Google be able to fare better than its competitors, and dominate the living room with Google TV devices? Perhaps, but here’s what I’m wondering about Google TV.

Is Google TV really a platform or a product?

Mobile Phones to have Universal Chargers

If the GSM Association has its way, by 2012 most phones will use a standardized charger to power them.  The association has announced a plan to standardize chargers across a spectrum of manufacturers.

Major manufacturers, including Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have joined the Universal Charging Solution (UCS) consortium. The list also includes major telecom companies like Vodafone, Orange, Qualcomm and Telefonica.
The aim is to make a standard charging solution implemented, probably using micro USB chargers. While some phones already have this feature, other manufacturers too are likely to join in, so that the standardization is achieved.

Apart from various benefits, this move could bring a reduction in the number of chargers produced, as old chargers will not become useless.
The move will also bring a considerable reduction in emission of greenhouse gases during manufacturing and transportation of replacement chargers.
The chargers, while remaining standard, will also be customized for “local” versions as some countries use proprietary plug points like the three pin plug used in the UK.

Nokia Too Readying its App Store?

The huge market share gives Nokia the biggest consumer base for its applications store now that it owns Symbian

Days after the announcement that Samsung is hopping on to the App Store bandwagon, here’s some more news and a rather big one at that.

Numero-uno phone maker Nokia too seems to be keen to join the likes of Apple, Android, RIM and Samsung with their own applications store. The report comes from Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-Review, who is not just any other blogger, but a person known to have insider contacts and contacts within the mobile phone industry. According to Eldar, the company might announce the new app store at the now imminent Mobile World Congress at Barcelona, Spain.

UnwiredView has translated what Eldar has mentioned in Russian. He seems to have had a first look at the portal that Nokia seems to have readied. This is what Eldar had to say. “At first glance, for now, the app portal looks so so, there is some confusion. But they are trying, polishing it and a lot has changed for the better in a matter of days. A right step in a right direction? And the distribution and revenue sharing model between app makers and Nokia looks very attractive.”

Now, Nokia entering the Apps Store bandwagon is quite significant owing to the fact that Symbian smartphones outnumber all other smartphone platforms with a dominating 46 percent market share. Apple’s iPhone is quite a distance away with 17 percent of the market share (although it has been growing at a phenomenal rate!). The huge market share gives Nokia the biggest consumer base for its applications store now that Nokia owns Symbian.

While this would be the first official jump by Nokia to create an applications eco-system, the company already has it’s MOSH and Download services which does a crude job of being an app store. It remains unclear as to how these initiatives end up once the app store is up and running.