By Doug Mohney, Contributing Editor
Many believe Google’s (News – Alert) purchase of GIPS as another salvo in challenging Skype’s relative dominance in the soft client VoIP market, but a real battle between the two companies is shaping up in with the television set as contested ground. Currently, Skype has the lead, but Google rolled out powerful allies in its presentation of GoogleTV. Will Yahoo be able to swing the ultimate winner?
Skype’s open volley took place in January at CES (News – Alert) 2010, when the company announced high-brow relationships with LG and Panasonic to put the Skype client onto HDTV sets to enable people to make voice and video calls, with Samsung (News – Alert) joining the club in February.
HDTV manufacturers are in an arms race for new features to add to their next products, having peaked with various tricks to enhance viewing without substantially increasing pricing. Since an LCD TV is basically an LCD monitor with some basic electronics on the back for receiving and decoding digital TV signals, it requires a CPU and some RAM (News – Alert) memory.
Invoke the phrase “Moore’s Law,” add a slightly faster processor, USB and Ethernet ports, flash memory to store apps and settings, plus a networking stack and you have a IP device capable of basic functions – emphasis on basic. Most HDTV manufacturers are using the cheapest ARM or MIPS processor they can get away with on the philosophy that consumers won’t pay $50-$100 more for a faster chip – and to be fair, computational speed in your TV is low on the least as compared to picture quality for sporting events.
As a result of this design choice, a good portion of this-year’s SkypeTVs are able to either walk (display TV) or chew gum (support Skype audio and video calls), but not do both because the processor and other resources aren’t available. In comparison to a “smart” HDTV, a typical Android (News – Alert) phone has a very fast processor, a fat flash memory, and relatively limited bandwidth — plus a small screen.
Take a step back and consider how the smartphone is being used to deliver video and content in a mobile environment. Compare that to the attributes of your TV — currently used to deliver video in a fixed environment. Aside from screen size, how different do you think those experiences will be five years from now? My guess is “Not much.”
Enter Google TV, with the backing of Adobe, Intel, Sony, Logitech, Best Buy and DISH Network. Google’s real value to the TV manufacturers — if they get on board — is offering Android as a common operating system and ecosystem (for apps) with plenty of developers. To date, Internet-enabled TV offerings have been a hodge-podge of proprietary-style apps, plus Yahoo’s efforts to get a standard set with its Connected TV widgets.
Yahoo’s TV friends include Samsung, LG, Sony, and VIZIO. Fair to say that Sony and Yahoo might re-examine their relationship moving forward.
The net result is that Google and Yahoo will be fighting to get their respective software platforms embedded into TV sets, with Google having the “Android Everywhere” advantage.
Skype’s love-hate role in this is relatively simple. As an Android-based application, Skype should be able to easily appear on any Google TV with less overhead than having to port Skype on a case-by-case basis to individual manufacturer’s hardware. However, that same ease-of-implementation likely means that Google TV can turn up with a Google Talk voice and video application in short order.
Doug Mohney is a contributing editor for TMCnet and a 20-year veteran of the ICT space. To read more of his articles, please visit columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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