After major launch missteps and all signs indicating to bad consumer adoption, Google TV has a difficult thoroughfare forward - and right away hardware associate Logitech isn't creation things any simpler for Google's chic TV program platform.
Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca threw Google beneath the train in a discussion call with analysts and investors on Thursday, initial reported by The Verge . De Luca cited the unsuccessful launch of Google TV as the primary reason because Logitech had unsatisfactory Q1 financials; the firm reported scarcely $30 million in losses is to quarter. In part, Google TV contributed significantly to losses of "Well over $100 million in operating profits."
As a result, Logitech is jumping ship. De Luca mentioned the firm has "no skeleton to deliver other box to reinstate Revue," and will let its existing register run down to zero. It's large damage manage for "[executing] a full scale launch with a beta product [which] cost us dearly," as De Luca put it.
In 2010, the firm gamble big on Google TV, production way more gadgets than it should have. "We approaching everyone to line up for XMas and purchase these boxes [at] $300," De Luca said. "That was a big mistake."
A dear mistake, at that. Then CEO Gerald P. Quindlen was booted, the firm longed for its Q1 guess by a mile, and as a result, Logitech slashed the Revue's cost to a third of what it primarily asked. Painfully, more gadgets were returned in the initial entertain than Logitech was even able to sell.
Despite its troublesomely hilly start, Google is currently ramping up for a second go at its chic TV program package. Last month, Google launched chronicle two of Google TV , full with a revamped user interface, Android Market app access, softened calm breakthrough mechanisms, and more firmly integrated YouTube functionality. It's what VP of product administration Mario Queiroz considers the second leg of "a marathon project, [rather than] a sprint."
A great part of Google's supposed marathon outline involves remedying big mistakes of the past, inclusive streamlining what many saw as complex marginal hardware.
"They attempted to make the Google TV experience as well sufficient similar to a computer," Forrester researcher James McQuivey mentioned in an interview. "Companies similar to Logitech invested in these complex peripherals, and they're as well complex for people."
The initial era of Google TV peripherals were truly a rumble of amalgamated keyboard/remote frankenware, a follow-up of the unsuccessful Web TV controllers initial introduced in the mid-90s. "It doesn't make any clarity to increase other remote to people's lives," McQuivey said.
Google has mentioned it's using its allies on redesigning the coordinator hardware, and will offer a streamlined, less-complex chronicle of a TV coordinator in the future. The associate working on the project is evidently Sony, the other major producer to offer a Google TV set-top box.
Sony did not reply to requests for comment.
But Google might not have all its eggs in Sony's basket in the arise of Logitech's pull-out. Google is rumored to be in talks with South Korean wiring conglomerate LG on producing its own chronicle of a Google TV set-top box, according to sources cited by Bloomberg .
An LG mouthpiece did not reply to a solicit for comment.
To be even reduction contingent on the remote manage hardware of associate manufacturers, however, Google could concentration on other marketplace segment in that it already has momentum: smartphones.
"Google hasn't paid consideration to the fact that you do not even need other remote when you have an Android phone," McQuivey said. "It might be the box that Logitech never needs to make other remote, and Google TV can still be a successful product."
Google is moreover beefing up on the calm side of its TV operation, not long ago announcing a renewed attend to Disney Interactive to bring more original calm to a co-branded YouTube channel. And not long ago Google voiced it would bring over 100 not similar genre-specific channels to YouTube , boosting efforts to bring original calm to the streaming video platform. Beefing up YouTube is notably applicable to the many new let go of Google TV, that features tighter YouTube formation and a better-performing YouTube app.
Further, Google could be in the early stages of developing its own "triple play"-style line TV service .
Fortunately, existing Logitech box owners won't be left out in the cold. "Logitech users can still design to obtain a V2 refurbish inside of the forthcoming weeks," a Google orator told us. Currently, Google TV chronicle 2 is rolling out to Sony boxes.
Coping with the recoil of De Luca's severe comments, Logitech doesn't wish its existing Revue owners to feel abandoned. "…Logitech waste committed to all of its Logitech Revue customers and will go on to give them with patron encouragement beneath our guaranty policy," a Logitech mouthpiece told Wired.com in a statement. The firm moreover skeleton to go on ancillary other Revue peripherals, inclusive its TV camera and mini-keyboard.
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