Initially confined to cable TV, RDK has since been opened out to all forms of video delivery. However, it is still very much cable-centric with Comcast, Time Warner and Liberty Global now sharing the venture through RDK Management. There are still just 13 deployments, although these are large operators including Comcast, Cox, Liberty Global, Rogers and Vodafone. Another 12 or so operators are evaluating the platform, according to RDK Management.

Already it is clear many more operators than that have deployed Android TV even if exact numbers are not available. Initially most Android TV deployments have been at smaller tier 2 operators for which the benefits of fast time to market and access to both the vast app ecosystem of Play store and advanced technologies such as voice driven personal assistants outweigh some loss of control. But now the platform is gaining traction as an alternative to RDK even with large operators, especially outside Europe where there is greater suspicion over Google’s motives, and especially outside the cable sector where RDK’s writ is strongest.

Both DISH and DirecTV, the two major satellite providers in the US, announced Android TV boxes in 2017. In France, Bouygues Telecom announced a new 4K Android TV box for release in 2018 to supplement its earlier HD one introduced in 2015. Then in Japan NTT DoCoMo has brought out an Android TV box for its impending IPTV service.

This is quite a turnaround after the initial disappointment of Google TV which was widely slated after its 2010 launch for being too complex and geared too much towards a personal computer environment. By 2013 there were still hardly any products and software developers had virtually given up on the operating system.

Google then came in with its second attempt to conquer the living room with a very different product, Chromecast, which proved much more successful and sold 17 million units in its first two years. However, running with a simplified version of the Chrome OS, it relies on an external Android device for processing and content, so it is merely a conduit from connected devices such as smart phones, tablets and games consoles to the big screen.

Meanwhile in June 2014 Android TV came along as a full replacement for the by then obsolete Google TV OS. This time it was based on the Android mobile OS, making it much easier for developers to port apps from the mobile version of the operating system to Android TV.

But even then Android TV still failed to gain much traction at first, with one negative factor being poor stability in the platform and inadequate documentation. Another drawback was lack of support for operators wanting to deploy services on Android TV and yet tailor them to their own lineups, according to Kai-Christian Borchers, Managing Director of German based 3 Screen Solutions (3SS), whose 3 Ready platforms is based on the latest versions of Android TV. “In the beginning Android TV was not at all attractive to operators because there was no custom launcher, no operator tier,” said Borchers. “Google still wanted to really hijack the STB and no operator was willing to engage. So, Google learned the hard way that their approach was not appropriate or acceptable to operators and had to change.”

But here’s the rub. The platform is now stable, while Google has modified its position and made significant overtures towards operators by allowing some degree of customization with the custom launcher. “The operator tier is a different flavor of Android TV, allowing even more ways of branding the UI as an operator and having more control over it with the custom launcher provided by Google.”