In a curious claim after the $100 million dollar failure by Logitech for its ill-fated attempts to sell Google TV, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said last week that the technology will be embedded on the “majority” of televisions at retail by next summer.
Schmidt made the improbable prediction at the Le Web conference in France, “paidContent” reported. Google recently relaunched Google TV with a software update that brings more apps to the platform.
“By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded in them,” Schmidt told the audience.
Even with his optimism, results so far show that Google faces numerous obstacles to achieve its goal in connected TV market. Originally launched last year, Google’s partners took a beating by critics over the difficulty associated with using the software. Sony cut prices of its Google TV products, while Logitech revealed disastrous results with its Google TV set-top box that cost the company $100 million in operating profits.
After such results, Google might have a hard time convincing television set manufacturers to adopt the Android-based platform, especially since a number of vendors have developed their own competing “smart TV” platforms.
Panasonic, Sony and Samsung, for example, have designed software for their television receivers. When it was announced, Google TV was viewed as a competitor to Apple’s $99 set-top box. Now there are rumors that Apple may introduce its own television set or will release an iMac computer with built-in TV functionality in the first half of 2012.
