Google TV Might Soon Become A Fitness Hub With Smart Home Features And More
Google’s expansion into the living and entertainment rooms has really taken off. There are now 110 million Android TV devices active each month, nearly a third of which have come online since May 2021. To continue its growth, the company is looking to turn your Google TV into a fitness hub with smart home features and more.
At least 250 device partners manufacture televisions running Android TV, including seven of the top smart TV makers. TCL recently announced that it’s selling 10 million TV sets each year with the Google TV launcher.
According to Rob Caruso, the director of product management for the platform, the hope is that “the Google TV experience will be the preferred choice for us and our partners that we deploy.” Google is still ship[ing Android TV, obviously, and continues to support it. However, it’s the Google TV product that the tech giant wants to really grow.
In order to help grow Google TV’s popularity, engineers are looking to add more features. These include fitness and smart home capabilities. In the future, the launcher could integrate tightly with Google’s own services and devices, like Google Fit and Fitbit. Third-party integrations could be part of the big picture, too.
Caruso also pointed out that Google TV is looking into better smart home controls. Recent changes on Android mobile phones could serve as a blueprint for that, but think having your TV double as a Google Nest hub. Considering how the competition addresses this, like the smart home integration Amazon includes in Fire TVs and the HomeKit capabilities in Apple TV, this would make a lot of sense.
Other Google TV features that might get more love include free live TV and video communication. Through a partnership with Pluto, Google TV got some free channels recently, and the company wants to expand on that. This gives new smart TV owners something to watch even if they haven’t subscribed to any streaming services yet.
In 2020, Google launched its Duo service on Android TV. Caruso suggested Zoom could be a candidate for further expansion of video calling on the smart TV,
The executive didn’t say when any of these features might appear, but apparently some could be right around the corner. Caruso told Protocol, “All of those areas are things that we’re looking at, that we’re exploring, and hopefully bringing out at some point later this year”.
