After some delay, Xperi has finally put smart TV's manufactured by Turkey-based Vestel on store shelves, with sets carrying the JVC brand now being sold in the Czech Republic.
Other European countries will see Vestel-made TVs arrive at their stores, carrying a broader spectrum of the Vestel brand portfolio, "in the coming weeks," Xperi CEO Jon Kirchner said during Xperi's third-quarter earnings call on Monday. (A transcript of that call is available here from Yahoo Finance.)
When it announced its OEM deal with Vestel in August 2022, Xperi was already seemingly late on a long-gestating plan to launch a smart TV OS that would compete with Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV and Samsung Tizen, among other software streaming video platform makers.
But Kirchner said Monday that Xperi is still on track to fulfill its goal of securing 7 million TiVo TVOS users by the end of 2025. He also said that Xperi has signed a fourth TV OEM partner that will begin integrating the TiVO OS into sets starting in 2024, and that more OEM announcements will be made during Xperi's year-end call in February.
Xperi is pursuing this advertising-based TVOS opportunity by targeting tier 2 smart TV manufacturers who don't have the resources to launch their own gateway operating system, but who also don't want to cede branding control of their TV's UX to Roku, Amazon or Google.
Separately but relatedly, Xperi is chasing other video business opportunities with the TiVo brand, announcing that more than 100 TV operators globally are using TiVo's IPTV solutions.
