Samsung's Samsung Apps Connected-TV App Store Surpasses 2 Million Downloads

Less than two months after announcing that its Samsung Apps connected-TV app store had surpassed its one millionth application download (see the article published on itvt.com, December 9th), Samsung said Monday that the store has now seen two million downloads. Samsung Apps, which launched around a year ago, allows users of Samsung connected-TV devices to purchase and download directly to those devices apps from a range of content and service providers. The store, which is available in 120 countries, currently features around 380 apps, of which 259 are free. Samsung is trumpeting the fact that, while it took only 268 days for the app store to see its one millionth download, it took just another 53 days for it to surpass the 2 million download milestone--the company credits the holiday season for the dramatically increased rate at which consumers downloaded apps from the store last month. "This achievement and the short period in which it was achieved demonstrate the rapidly growing popularity of applications and content for smart TV's," Sangchul Lee, SVP of Samsung's Visual Display Business, said in a prepared statement. "Samsung's leadership role in this category has paid off and allowed us to provide new experiences for consumers that are more rich and integrated than any before."

According to Samsung, the apps most frequently downloaded from Samsung Apps include YouTube, Hulu Plus, ESPN Next Level, AccuWeather, Google Maps and Texas Hold'em. Since the store surpassed the 1 million downloads milestone, the company says, it has been averaging 100,000 downloads every five days. In order to encourage development for its connected-TV platform, Samsung held a series of "Free the TV Developer Days" around the world last year, which it says brought together developers and "notable leaders across the connected-TV ecosystem to discuss and plan for the next era of Smart TV." It also recently announced (see the article published on itvt.com, January 6th) the winner of an application-development contest dubbed the "Free the TV Challenge" (note: a demo video of Movl.com's WeDraw app, the first-prize winner of the Free the TV Challenge, is embedded above). The company made a splash at CES earlier this month, when it announced that Comcast and Time Warner Cable would be bringing OTT versions of their pay-TV services to its connected-TV platform (see the article published on itvt.com, January 11th).