There’s a new report coming out this evening, via GigaOM, that the next generation of Google TV devices are going to get rebranded as Android TV. GigaOMis also reporting that OEMs are producing new Google TV have been informed them that Google is officially changing the branding to Android TV for the next round of products hitting the market. So far Google hasn’t commented on this, or even confirmed it. But it has started using “Android TV” in some instanced while partners are not including “Google TV” branding in recently announced products:
Some of Google’s hardware partners have already made the switch. Sony introduced a new smart TV adapter dubbed the Bravia TV stick last month. The device is based on the most recent version of Google TV, but Sony’s announcement didn’t mention that fact once… Even members of the original Google TV team have started to drop that name when talking about their work. A recently-scheduled developer event in Seoul was officially called “Android TV Developer Day,” and some developers have started to change affiliations in their online biographies from “Google TV” to “Android TV.”
You may also remember that back after Google I/O, Sundar Pichai did say that Google TV would be getting an update to Jelly Bean by the end of the year. Well so far we’ve heard nothing about it, and they are still sitting on Android 3.x Honeycomb. Many of us thought the Chromecast was replacing Google TV, which was pretty cool I thought. But Sundar did confirm that both products will exist in the future. I still think that they should combine the Google TV and Chromecast teams so instead of having two products that most people have forgotten about due to the lack of support and attention, we can have one good product. Sounds good right?
Anyways, we are expecting an announcement from Google next week about Android 4.4 and the new Nexus 5 and Nexus 10. So we might see some Google TV news come out of that. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.