Google stumbles in TV playground

Google Inc., the company known for innovation, has stumbled in what was to be its main offering this holiday season. It has asked several of its partners to delay their rollouts of Google TV so that the company can further refine it.

LG, Toshiba, and Sharp were supposed to unveil their own versions of Google TV at the high-profile Consumer Electronics Show in January, but now have been asked to hold back, the New York Times reported.

Google TV was first launched in October this year in partnership with Sony. The response from the market was lukewarm. Early reviews included one by David Pogue that said it is an enormous step in the wrong direction.

Google aims to use the current delay to refine the software further to incite better responses from the market, but experts say that the company might be struggling to make it big in the consumer market space.

The delay by Google, coming just three weeks before the opening of the high-profile consumer show, is quite unexpected.

This move puts brakes on big plans for a grand celebration of Google TV at the show, and deflated hopes of players like Toshiba, LG Electronics and Sharp, who were betting on the software to boost the declining sales of their LED TVs.

Last month, the company lowered the price of Google TV, which lifted sales a notch. However, it still remained far below sales of competitors like Apple which also launched a new TV software couple of months ago.