It's not often that we get some big Android TV news, but today two interesting Android TV tidbits have come out.
Android TV now has 5,000 apps and games. Shalini Govil-Pai, Android TV's senior director of product management, confirmed the news to TechHive, adding that that's up from 3,000 apps one year ago. Govil-Pai went on to tease that Google is planning to redesign the Play Store for Android TV and add video previews for apps to help make the platform more appealing to developers.
Despite being home to 5,000 apps, there are still big names like DirecTV Now missing from the platform, and the Hulu app is old and missing the service's live TV offering. The good news is that that situation may improve soon, because Google spokesperson Ivy Chen teased that "there are conversations happening, and we're optimistic for them coming on board."
Switching over to hardware, Chen said that there are some hardware announcements planned for the next couple of weeks and that more devices should be launching this fall. Google I/O is kicking off on May 7th, so perhaps we'll hear more about some new Android TV hardware there.
Fans of Android TV haven't had a ton to get excited about lately, with a Google Photos privacy bug recently affecting users and the lack of any really good hardware since the launch of NVIDIA's Shield TV a couple of years ago. Today's news from Google is encouraging, though, with the company working to improve the app situation on Android TV and teasing some upcoming hardware announcements.
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