Google Rolls Out Chromecast In Japan And Australia

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Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) on Tuesday rolled out a Chromecast media streaming dongle in Japan for 4,200 yen or just over US$40. The Chromecast dongle will be available at Google Play Store, Amazon and selected retailers beginning today, according to an official blog. The search engine giant is launching the device in Japan just two weeks after it was launched in South Korea, the first market in Asia.

Chromecast in Australia

Users can use Chromecast in other countries to stream content to TVs from iOS, Android, Mac and Windows Devices. Chromecast was launched last July in the United States, followed by Canada and nine European countries this March.

Apart from Japan, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) also unveiled Chromecast in Australia to take over the traditional TV viewing. According to the Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia [CEASA], the national television market is worth $4 billion. In the United States, Chromecast has entered into major deals with companies like Netflix and live sports channels like Major League Baseball.

Google to face tough competition

However, in Australia, Chromecast will offer only selected services like ABC’s iVIew platform, media rental service Quickflic and Foxtel’s fledging movie service Presto.  Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) has held conversations with local content rights owners such as Testra and commercial TV stations, and there are no forthcoming plans for Chromecast offerings from those player. Users will also be able to watch movies and TV shows from the Google’s Play store with the help of the device.

Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management at Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG), said that Chromecast is very popular around the world, however, he refused to divulge any information on its success in Australia.

“We expect it to be a top seller … but we’re not quoting any sales figures,” he said. Queiroz added that the company has enough content that consumers will like similar to other countries. Consumers will be able to access new content every day.

He added, “Partners are going to say ‘oh, now we have more TVs that are connected to the web so I can very easily update my mobile apps to work with Chromecast.”

Netflix offers popular movies and shows for $8.99 per month while Google Play streams movies at $6 per view and TV episodes at $2.99 each.

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