People of Lava launches Scandinavia Android TV, melts home theater hearts and wallets

After teasing us with its cool hardware and even cooler name last spring, Swedish TV maker People of Lava has now launched what it claims is the world’s first Android-powered TV — that is if you don’t count Korea’s Smartroi TV running Android 1.5 . Its top-of-the-line 55-inch models cost a wallet-singeing 40,000 Swedish Krona (or roughly $5,820) and ship with Android 1.5 along with widgets for Google Chrome, Facebook, YouTube and Google Maps. They also have access to an app store which currently only includes 20 titles, but could grow to more than 1,000 by the end of the year — since according to marketing director Martin Ljunggren, the store should import any app now in the Android Market that’s scalable to a TV screen. That’s a feat we’re curious to see given Android’s difficultly scaling apps even to tablet screens — but hey, what do we know? In terms of sales, People of Lava hopes to move $29 million dollars worth of Scandinavia units in 2011, in both Sweden and niche US and UK markets. Overall that’s great news for the tech savvy well-to-do, but considering Mountain Vew’s focus on Google TV , we’re not sure how long these Android TVs will be around. People of Lava launches Scandinavia Android TV, melts home theater hearts and wallets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Posted by on November 16, 2010. Filed under News, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry