IFA 2011: LG, Sharp and Philips announce Smart TV Apps

LG, Sharp and Philips announce Smart TV Apps collaboration to bring a conformity across the LCD TV super brands.

Apps have been one of the biggest revolutions in the tech industry with the word and feature of applications rising from nowhere to become the must-have feature on any modern gadget.

One of the latest Gadgets to take the plunge into apps is the Television world, with the inclusion of Internet ready TVs with apps installed and available to download becoming a major feature.

Is the future of TV Apps?

With the rise of internet TVs has come an influx of different Apps from each manufacturer, all of which vary in degrees of effectiveness. Therefore, a partnership between LG, Sharp and Philips should bring an end to some of the more lacklustre apps on the market and improve the overall quality.

The three tech giants have all agreed on a unified platform featuring common technical requirements which will mean Apps on the TVs will be of a better quality, more uniformed and should offer a richer standard of online content.

The Smart TV technical requirements will be based on open standards such as HTML5, CE-HTML and HbbTV and at the announcement for the Smart Apps service it was revealed that a SDK (software development kit) will be introduced in beta to allow developers to get working on Apps which would work on Sharp, LG and Philips Smart TVs.

In a press release about the partnership it states: “LG, Philips and Sharp invite other Smart TV makers and application developers to participate in the initiative and provide ideas for simplifying the development process while improving the user experience,”

Whilst it’s currently unknown what will come out of the partnership, it can only be good for consumers like us as we can ensure a better quality of Apps and features to be on future Internet-ready smart TV’s.