LG, Philips And Sharp Join Hands To Offer Multi-Platform Smart TV Apps

Write Once, Run Everywhere: TV Manufacturers Cooperate to Maximize Effectiveness of Smart TV Offerings

BERLIN — LG Electronics (KSE: 066570), Philips (Amsterdam: PHIA) and Sharp Corp.(TSE: 6753) have agreed to work together to define common technical requirements for their Smart TVs, based upon open standards such as HTML5, CE-HTML and HbbTV. The group’s first step will be to introduce the first beta version of a common Software Development Kit (SDK), which highlights the need to define the technical requirements that would allow content developers to create a single application that can run on Smart TVs from LG, Philips and Sharp Aquos Net+.

The initiative aims to simplify the way applications are developed and offered, increasing productivity of the application ecosystem for the Smart TV industry. Currently, application developers must spend much time and effort porting and testing their applications on different platforms. By simplifying this step, developers will be able to spend more time actually creating applications such as movies-on-demand, music services, games and social networking services. And developers will be able to maximize their reach across Smart TV’s on different TV platforms, giving more consumers access to a wider variety of content.

“This cooperation is nothing less than a watershed in the brief history of Smart TVs,” said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company. “By working in partnership with two innovators in TVs, we’ve taken a major step towards creating an app market every bit as inventive and dynamic as the one that exists for smartphones.”

LG, Philips and Sharp invite other Smart TV makers and application developers participate in the initiative and provide ideas for simplifying the development process while improving the user experience.

The beta version of the common SDK will be released in early October.