Philips, LG, Sharp & Loewe have taken the initiative to investigate the possibility of a specification for Apps on their Smart TV platforms. That should make it easier for developers to release Apps and therefore bring more Apps to the united Smart TV platform.

Philips, LG, Sharp & Loewe Smart TV partnership
This was unexpected. Philips, Sharp and Loewe were already working together on a common Smart TV platform but now LG has been added and the four companies plan to combine their Smart TV efforts.


LG’s current Smart TV platform

The companies will look into a specification of common technical requirements for Smart TV, based upon open standards such as HTML5, CE-HTML and HbbTV. As a first step, they will introduce the first beta version of a common Software Development Kit (SDK), which illustrates the need to define technical requirements that would allow developers to create a single application that can run on the Smart TV’s from Philips, LG, Sharp and Loewe.


Philips current Smart TV platform

This cooperation, for which Philips and LG signed a letter of intent, aims to simplify the way applications are developed. Currently, application developers spend a lot of time and effort porting and testing their applications on different TV platforms. By reducing this, developers will be able to spend more time on actually developing useful applications such as movies on demand, catch-up TV, music services, games, Social Networking Services and infotainment.

The press release is not very specific but we are pretty sure that the manufacturer's will keep the graphical user interface from their current Smart TV platforms and only seek to find a common TV App specification.

Philips, LG and Sharp invite other Smart TV makers, application developers, and other interested parties to participate in this initiative.

The beta version of the common SDK will be released by early October 2011.