Google shows some startling statistics that there are around 550,000 android based activations per day, and 250,000 apps in the Google Market (this figure does not include third party application stores). The emergence of the android OS among a myriad of devices has enable android to have a 36% market share in the Smartphone market. Despite the fragmentation issues which the OS pose among diverse hardware, and, the user interface being not as consistent in look and feel as the Apple iOS, a profound adoption of the android based devices is evident. However the story does not end there…
The Android OS has transcended from the Smartphone, tablet device, to be adapted to the STB (Set Top Box) market, primarily for Interactive TV and Video services. The key proposition in this is the Android architecture framework.
Android is a software platform, rather than an OS. This helps exploit the potential for deployment across a much wider range of device. The Application framework in Android presents high level services to the application in the form of Java classes. Through the combination of layers and the enabling environment for software reuse, Android goes beyond standard Linux in the provisioning of everything needed in an integrated manner. Furthermore Android Webkit2 UI library is ported across many platforms such as Symbian OS, GTK, Qt, iOS and also embraced by several media SOC manufacturers such as Sigma Designs.
The only aspect lying between the Android capability and the Set Top Box, is the market requirement, and specifically between the “lean-forward” and “lean-back” market. Whilst “lean-back” viewing such as TV viewing at home presents an overwhelming requirement to watch TV and VoD rather than interactive services such as Facebook, Twitter and other apps etc., the “lean-forward” viewing such as OTT,PC-TV presents a good opportunity to provide an admixture of content and applications much akin to what is available in the appstores. Obviously these markets present different challenges to IPTV manufacturers in the whole value chain from encoding, ingest, encryption to delivery, in terms of their positioning.
Notwithstanding, the Android Framework can be the common glue amongst these two markets from a middleware platform perspective, as its feature rich modular framework and consonance to work among devices and STB, will present the ideal platform for service providers.
This does not avoid the Holy Grail for service providers (1) Know your market and the product positioning (2) Holistic technology vision for addressing these market requirements
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