Google’s Chromecast Launches in 11 Countries This Week

Monday 24 March 2014

Google’s Chromecast Launches in 11 Countries This Week

Unknown / at 02:55 / No comments

Only last week Google’s Sundar Pichai gave the first indications of just when the tech giant’s Chromecast streaming device would be available outside the United States. Google originally launched the Chromecast HDMI streaming dongle along with the second generation Google Nexus 7 in July of 2013.

The wait for the rest of us over the pond is finally over as this week saw Google opening up sales of the Chromecast device to eleven new countries. News had already been made available that the Chromecast has gone on sale in the UK on March 19. As of today Chromecast is available in an additional 10 countries apart from the UK: Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. The official statement on the Chrome blog explains that Chromecast will be made available in the Google Play Store for all of the aforementioned countries. Retailers that are stocking the streaming dongle include: Amazon, Currys, Elkjøp, FNAC, Media Markt, PC World and Saturn.

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Chromecast SDK

In March of this year Google launched the Google Cast Software Development Kit (SDK) for developers. This SDK allowed them to design and construct support for Chromecast into their apps on the Android OS, iOS and the Chrome operating system. In addition to the existing Chromecast capable apps, Google has said that since the SDK was launched, over 3000 developers worldwide have signed up to Chromecast for their content. For the 11 new countries, this means that UK users will be able to cast BBC iPlayer to their TV.

The Chromecast device allows users to wirelessly display media content from Android smartphones and tablets, iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads and laptops or desktop PCs and Chromebooks that are running Google’s Chrome OS. The current list of supported apps is limited but includes huge apps like YouTube and Netflix, but with the release of the SDK for Android, iOS and Chrome we will see that list of apps grow quickly going forward.