‘Looks at perfectly functional Galaxy Watch 3 on my wrist’
Smartest thing they could do now is shut down their remaining software development. Ship the TVs with vanilla Google OS
I think there’s a difference between smartwatches and TVs in terms of being able to monetize the operating system. On the tiny screen of a watch you can’t really put any advertisement (at least not without destroying the usability completely) and most of the things you can analyse are happening on the smartphone.
A TV on the other hand gives you a huge surface in the living room of a families home and if you have control of the OS there are plenty of ways to monetize it (and companies willing to pay for it). You can preinstall certain streaming apps (and get payed for it), promote newly released movies and give links to rent them (either your own shop or again for commission), you can collect userdata and sell that to other companies, and much more.
I think it’s telling that monetizing the operating system is the immediate place one jumps to with this, rather than earning more profit by selling more products which are better for the consumer.
Yeah, sadly from a economic perspective it is kind of obvious how a continuous source of revenue might be more appealing compared to a one time purchase. Especially with a product like TVs that usually have a pretty long lifetime before being replaced.
Although i would point out that (at least in our current society) privacy and an ad-free experience in many ways is treated as a luxury good. Persumably a TV with a better OS would be sold at a higher price, and confronted with this choice many consumers would likely choose the cheaper one.
privacy as a luxury good
Sounds like what Apple is trying to do…
Sadly wanting privacy is kind of a niche thing, not a large # of people buying iPhones to avoid surveillance. And most TV buyers DGAF… If a large # of them opted out of content recognition we’d still have dumb TVs on the market.
Unfortunately I think without some kind of regulation that makes personal info a liability / hot potato, it will still be treated as an asset to be collected:(
