Samsung TV Plus, the app that hosts hundreds of free channels, could eventually come to non-Samsung TVs. That’s according to technical media reporter Janko Roettgers, who write in your low pass Newsletter that Samsung is in talks to bring its streaming app to TCL TVs.
Introduced in 2015, Samsung TV Plus is a free ad-supported streaming (FAST) service that comes pre-installed on newer Samsung TVs. The service gives viewers a way to flip through a collection of channels, just like they would with a traditional television service.
Samsung TV Plus has a pretty solid list of content for a free app, with Samsung adding popular shows like top team, Law and Order Special Victims Unit, NCISY chicago fire last August. It also offers a variety of local and national news channels, along with channels created by Samsung such as Ride or Drive and The Movie Hub. TV Plus currently has around 1,600 channels spread across 24 different countries, along with 220 channels in the US.
It seems that Samsung wants to make its TV Plus service a floating application
While the company has floated the idea of licensing individual channels to other TV makers, a source tells Roettgers these talks “do not seem to have gone anywhere.” That’s why Samsung has switched gears to offer the full TV Plus app to third-party manufacturers. Over the years, Samsung has been expanding the reach of TV Plus and made the service available on Galaxy devicesthe web and even on select models of Family Hub refrigerators.
Other TV makers, including TCL, LG and Vizio, have their own free streaming apps, which also compete with services that aren’t attached to specific TVs, including Paramount’s Pluto TV, NBC’s Peacock, Fox’s Tubi, Roku and Amazon. Freevee. . It seems Samsung wants to make its TV Plus service a floating app as well, but it’s unclear if other manufacturers will want the app on their TVs, or if the app will be successful.
As Roettgers points out, “the success of FAST services is closely related to the level of promotion they receive at the platform level,” such as their inclusion in the TV interface or as a button on your remote control. the edge He reached out to Samsung with a request for comment but did not immediately hear back.
In August, Samsung said that TV Plus saw 100 percent growth in consumer viewing over the past year, with viewers streaming 3 billion hours worldwide. In the meantime, a report of Deadline attests to the growth of the FAST market as a whole, as data the outlet obtained from S&P Market Intelligence indicates that the FAST market in the US was expected to generate around $4 billion in revenue last year, and it could reach nearly $9 billion by 2026.
Although I don’t have a Samsung TV, I have to say that I enjoy the various free content that I can browse on the LG channels. For me, it’s much less daunting to flip through the channels and finally decide what I want to watch, rather than having to navigate through the hundreds of shows in front of me on Netflix or Hulu.
