With the new tools, developers can test their existing mobile or tablet Android applications in a big-screen environment, eventually porting them over to run on Google TV. It’s also possible to create new Android applications made specifically for Google TV.
“With the add-on you can test your apps to determine if they would be a good fit for TV and whether any tweaks are required,” wrote Google TV product manager Ambarish Kenghe in a blog post.
Apps made specifically to interact with mobile and tablet interfaces, however, won’t run on the Google TV interface. For instance, if an application requires touchscreen interaction, a Google TV user won’t be able to find the app on the Android Market.
Google’s “smart TV” platform received much attention and critical praise after debuting it at the I/O developer conference last year. But after major networks began to block online versions of their content to Google TV set top boxes right around the time of Google TV’s launch, the product failed to catch on widely with consumers. So much so that Logitech, one of the largest manufacturers of Google TV set top boxes, reported “slightly negative” revenues for its Revue Google TV units, as product returns outpaced sales in the second quarter.
Still, Google has a chance to bolster the Google TV platform’s following by cross-breeding it with Android, a platform with a far stronger fan base.
Google TV devices will be Android compatible after an upcoming Android OS update to version 3.0 (Honeycomb).
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