One of the features you'll find in all the best Samsung TVs is Samsung TV Plus, the firm's very own TV streaming service. As the best TVs get closer to each other in terms of price and performance, firms such as Samsung are using bundled services as a way to stand out from their rivals – but it seems that Samsung has decided that it'd rather have eyeballs on more sets than just Samsungs.
A new report says that the firm is planning to bring its Samsung TV streaming to other manufacturers, starting with TCL. And it's the whole service, not just a few selected channels.
What's Samsung bringing to TCL TVs?
The report is in Janko Roettger's smart TV and entertainment newsletter LowPass, where "multiple sources with knowledge of those conversations" between Samsung and other firms say that Samsung is "considering a move that seemed unthinkable not too long ago" by licensing its TV Plus service to rivals.
As Roettger points out, Samsung has already moved its ad-supported TV service beyond its own TV sets: it expanded it to include mobile devices in 2020 and launched a web-based version in 2021. In August, Samsung said it had streamed more than 3 billion hours of TV to TV Plus viewers over 12 months.
The strategy appears to be based on the assumption that there are already too many FAST (free / ad supported TV) services from too many players, and that an inevitable market concentration is going to kill off the less successful ones. Samsung clearly intends to be one of the victors if that happens – but that depends on other TV manufacturers making room for its service on their all-important electronic programme guides.
What isn't clear from Roettger's sources is whether this plan is still current; as he writes, "it's unclear how far those talks [with TCL] advanced, or whether they are still going". Neither TCL nor Samsung was willing to comment – so while neither firm has confirmed the story, they haven't denied it either.
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