Google TV comes to Android SDK

Exciting times are ahead for those of us with an interest in the emergence of truly ubiquitous IPTV services, as Google announced to the Android development community this week that, with the upcoming OS update to Honeycomb, Google TV devices will finally be Android compatible.

So what does this mean? It means that soon we’ll be able to start building apps for TV, and to optimise our existing Android mobile apps for display on internet-enabled televisions, distributing our new TV apps through Google’s Android Marketplace.

This has huge potential for brands and content-owners who have already invested a significant amount of their marketing budget getting their content onto Android mobile and tablet devices, and can now roll that content out into the living room.

Google announced that the add-on will allow developers to emulate the Google TV platform using the standard SDK tools on Linux platforms. Google will also be releasing new API’s to enable direct interaction with televisions.

This move breathes life into a platform that has experienced sizeable teething troubles, and will put considerable pressure on the beleaguered YouView project to step it up a notch or be left behind.

Google’s clear advantage in entering the marketplace while other platforms were struggling to get their act together is reinforced by an existing development community champing at the bit to roll their mobile apps out to a wider market.