Tim
In a recent interview with GigaOm, Google VP of project management Mario Queiroz, who oversees Chromecast, laid out a few plans that consumers can expect to see from the HDMI dongle device in 2014. Google has seen quite a bit of popularity from the little device priced at $35, which connects Internet content from services such as Netflix and YouTube to your living room’s big screen. Since its release, the service has been extremely limited by what apps it has been compatible with, as Google continues to finalize Chromecast’s SDK for developers. Only recently has Google allowed a large list of ten approved applications to work with Chromecast, but consumers want more.
In 2014, Queiroz states that Chromecast will head overseas, and in fact, says that folks in different countries should be “pleasantly surprised” by how wide the international expansion is planned to be. A reason Google wants to enter the International markets quickly is to allow developers in foreign nations a chance to have their applications compatible upon release, as the SDK will soon be fully open to all developers across the world. Google’s vision is to have any app be compatible, and Queiroz states that, “there will be an expectation from consumers that any and every app will be ‘castable.'”
With an International launch and an open SDK coming next year, Google is still looking at the bigger picture, hard at work with consumer electronic manufacturers to bring the “Google Cast” standard to as many devices as possible.
Since the beginning, we have always hoped that any app we use on our phones could be castable to our TVs. If it can possibly handle games and other intense applications, then it would nearly eliminate the need for other third party hardware that sometimes costs an arm and a leg. Yes, we’re looking at you Android-powered game consoles.
Hold on to those Chromecast dongles – they’re about to get a whole lot more valuable.
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