Broadband TV News reports that at the Connected TV World Summit, Thomas Helbo, the CTO of Com Hem, the Swedish Pay TV operator, said that it will launch an Android-based STB that will be intended for clients that don’t want to use Tivo (which Com Hem wants to retain as an option). The company looked at Turn Key, RDK and Android as environments for boxes, but decided that the flexibility, standards and multi-screen options for Android made it the best choice. The launch will happen in Q4 2017.
Separately, the blog reports that RDK claimed at the event that there are now 25 million devices (RDK-V + REK-B) devices globally and 300 companies are involved in the ecosystem. In the last 12 months, new deployments have been in Swittzerland, Germany, Portugal, the US and Canada)
Responding to a question, an executive also said that he would like to see an app platform with Android on top. RDK makes it easier to move from one STB to another.
