Coming to a screen near you

Visitors at a consumer innovation exhibition in Las Vegas play a video-tennis game on a SmartTV produced by the Chinese IT giant ZTE Corp. Many companies aim to enter the sector on expectation that it will expand rapidly in the coming years. Tuo Yannan / China Daily

The nearly future

LAS VEGAS - In the nearly future, clients will be able to use smartphones to control their televisions or access a cloud-computing center and download applications for a smart TV.

In the Internet era, the boundary between Internet mobile devices and TVs are blurred. More and more non-TV makers have entered the smart TV market and have loaded their products with many new features and functions.

This year, many IT enterprises plunged themselves into the industry, including Google Inc, Apple Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd. In January at the Consumer Electronics Show, the world's largest electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, those companies led the smart TV trend.

Name as a rule associated with TVs

Although Lenovo isn't a name as a rule associated with TVs, it launched the ideaTV K91, the company's first smart TV, at CES and said it will hit the Chinese market in April. The TV uses Android 4.0, an even newer operating system than Google's TV.

Lenovo's 3D-TV has a face-recognition function to help parents to limit their children's watching time. "We are a PC company so we have adapted our PC-making strengths to our TVs," said Liu Jun, Lenovo senior vice-president and president of the company's Mobile Internet and Digital Home Business Group.

Based on its PC-manufacturing experience, Lenovo added a voice-input function and a smartphone or tablet PC control feature to its TV products - functions not seen on a traditional TV previously.

Another IT giant, Google, has adapted its popular Android operating system for smart TVs, giving it the look of a huge smartphone.

The manufacturing partner for Google TV

LG Display is the manufacturing partner for Google TV. It says its two Google TV sets will be on sale later this year and will use a homegrown chipset. LG has revamped Google's user interface to suit its own needs nevertheless kept the main features of the US-based company. For instance, a cinema screen 3D-HDTV at the trade show used the 3D screen innovation for dual-view gaming, with each player getting their own full-screen view simultaneously in a two-player game.

To cater for the younger generation, who spend more time in front of computers or rather than TVs, the smart TV has easy access to the Internet and users can choose programs and applications from Google's applications market, turning watching TV into a proactive form of leisure.

In order to keep up with cutting-edge innovation, TV makers have as well added more functions to their products to compete in the market.

The show to promote its smartphones

Chinese TV maker TCL Corp attended the show to promote its smartphones and smart TVs. According to TCL chief executive officer Tomson Li, the company will cooperate with Amazon Inc to produce a 3D TV and join hands with other Chinese TV makers, including Changhong Electric Co Ltd and Hisense Group.

Apple was as well reported to be launching its first smart TV in April this year. According to media reports, the TV will use Siri, the same voice-control system that was adapted for the popular handset iPhone 4S.