Booming TV market a boon for app makers, tech firms

Nearly 350 million Web-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles and other devices will be sold worldwide by 2015, four times the number from last year, according to new research from Parks Associates. That blossoming market is going to be a boon for app developers because of the growing consumer demand for access to online video, streaming music, photos, social networking, personalized news, games and other content on their TVs. And, of course, that will have implications for tech companies like Apple, Google, Yahoo, Netflix and others that are clamoring for a piece of the action.

"Content options are finally catching up to the hardware innovations, and growing libraries of on-demand movies and TV available are starting to unlock the potential of connected TV devices as multifunction online entertainment and communications platforms," Kurt Scherf, vice president of the Dallas research firm, said. Parks released the report in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which will be flooded with the latest, greatest Web-enabled TVs and other devices.