Boxee may go to subsidized deals to compete with Apple TV

Boxee may turn to subsidies to help get the price down and better compete in the market, company founder Avner Ronen said in an episode of the This Week in Startups show.He mentioned that the $200 street price for a Boxee Box was "way too expensive" to get mass market adoption and floated the idea as one option for future models. Nothing was definite in the talk and might not necessarily come about with a future deal.

Ronen also provided some brief hints at the possible future of Boxee. Gaming was a possibility as he noted that games had often driven technology adoption, but it would most likely occur through the browser in HTML rather than through proprietary apps.

Boxee hasn't given out sales numbers but has taken a mixed approach to competing with Apple. The hopes to subsidize the Boxee are a first sign of intent to more directly challenge the Apple TV and Roku's Internet Player, both of which hit or dive below the $100 price mark through their use of cheaper but roughly as efficient processors.

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Apple Removes WikiLeaks Program From App Store.

Apple Inc., a California-based consumer electronics giant said it had removed a program from its popular App Store that allowed users to view information from the WikiLeaks website, as well as its Twitter feed, using Apple’s iPhone and iPad mobile devices.

WikiLeaks recently published a raft of U.S. diplomatic cables, prompting the ire of U.S. government. Apple isn’t alone in cutting off access to WikiLeaks or halting business transactions with the group behind the website. Amazon.com Inc. shut down WikiLeaks’ account on its Web servers, while eBay Inc. unit PayPal, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are preventing people from using their services to donate money to the group.

Apple, which voids the warranty of its products if unauthorized apps are loaded onto them, has a history of “disappearing” apps. Earlier this year, the company began removing adult-themed apps, even though it had already approved them for sale. It also approved – and then removed – a game called “Baby Shaker” that generated a raft of bad publicity for the company.

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Samsung seeks to open TV apps to third-party developers

Samsung held its first developer conference yesterday called Free the TV Challenge. The company would like to cultivate an apps development environment that will allow them to greatly expand their applications. Samsung's connected TVs have about 80 apps available to them today, but they are expected to grow to more than 200 before the end of the year.

The notion of greatly expanding apps on the connected TV comes with it both opportunity and risks. The opportunity comes in providing a great many more applications and testing their applicability on the connected TV display to determine their usability and demand. One question that the TV manufacturers are asking themselves is how will app use differ on the connected TV versus the smartphone. It's anecdotal to expect that entertainment-oriented apps - video, music, games, etc. - will fare well, but the industry is wondering if other types of applications will matter. Our own Digital Media Evolution II survey provides some enticing clues about the applications that may drive the sale of connected TVs in the short-term. Outside of a premium video-on-demand service (for TV shows and movies), our research finds a correlation between the high appeal for applications related to music, directions/maps, traffic, weather, news, and stocks. Also jumping out were applications for booking travel and for family calendaring.

The challenges for the manufacturers regarding apps - particularly in an open development environment - is how they can promote the freedom to develop apps while deciding which applications are appropriate for display on a TV. Also, will there be easy-to-use tools that would allow parents to set controls on the types of apps that could be accessed (and possibly paid for) by the kids?

Finally, there is plenty of talk about the reinvention of the television user interface/program guide, and its implications for discovery and search. What happens in an environment where hundreds - if not thousands - of apps are suddenly available on the TV screen? How will consumers search for and find the apps that matter to them? How will they be organized so as not to overwhelm the screen? I had an interesting briefing yesterday with a company called Veveo, which is working on ways to make the search and discovery process simpler for end-users. They indicate that although video search and discovery is a primary focus, the way in which they will help users discover and use apps on mobile and fixed consumer electronics will be a significant development path.