Love it or hate it, the Google Chromecast $35, or less, media stick is a powerful and practical device. It has paved the way for a slew of new apps to easily share content to the big screen with a few simple taps. It is the sole device that my wife and I use in our bedroom for media consumption and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not to long ago I caught some talk about a new Chromecast that had passed through the FCC. There was a variety of discussion online about it. The only real change that was listed in the filing was 5GHz Wi-Fi compatibility.
In a recent interview with GigaOM, Google VP of product management, Mario Queiroz, shared a lot of numbers out there about Chromecast and Google Cast. For instance, at Google I/O they reported that users tapped the Cast button 400 million times. That is the number of times the button was pressed, not the number of shows, tracks or photos displayed since many apps, like Netflix, will now automatically start the next episode, that wouldn’t be counted as a tap. Since then another 250 million taps have been recorded. That brings the total to 650 million times since it launched 15 months ago. He also shares that over 6.000 developers are creating cast apps and more than 10,000 apps have been built.
On the Google Cast front he talks, indirectly, why the name changed. Surprise, it is exactly what we all thought. The service name changed because there will be multiple end points for the service. ie. Chromecast and Android TV.
While all of that information is good, the real reason you clicked in was to find out about a second gen Chromecast. The interview is on video and if you bounce to 11:45 in the video the question comes up on if there will be a second version of Chromecast. Mario simply says “Yes, there will be a second version of Chromecast in the future.” That is all we get unfortunately as Mario wouldn’t get into any feature sets. Towards the end of the interview a question was asked about game streaming to Chromecast. Mario comes back saying that game streaming can be an important use case for the Chromecast, but are currently very focused on video, audio and images. However, if they can get to the right latency it is very possible. Take a quick watch if you would like.
What would you like to see in the next-gen Chromecast?
Source: GigaOMÂ via 9to5Google
