Google [NASDAQ:GOOGL] announced today at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that they would begin supplying Sony, Sharp and TP Vision with their Android TV software in the spring of this year. This will be in direct competition with Apple's set-top box, Amazon's Fire TV and Samsung’s smart TVs.
Samsung, which has around 25% global market share of smart TV sales, also announced that all of their new smart TVs would run its self-developed Tizen operating system, and not Google’s Android software.
Google’s announcement may be bad news for Google TV, and all the hardware that goes along with it. From now on, Google will most likely be focusing their efforts on Android TV and the Cast ecosystem, meaning app developers might have to start everything again from scratch.
Investors apparently didn’t like the news as share prices were down 2.47% today. It looks like the stock wants to retest the 52-week low at $497.19, set at the end of December last year. If it fails, the next supports will be at $490, $470 (38.2% Fibonacci retracement) and $425 (50% Fibonacci retracement).
As of today, GOOGL has fallen 21.4% from its 52-week high and is in correction territory. The stock has been under selling pressure since mid-summer 2014.
Recently, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, cut their price target on the stock citing all kinds of reasons, including lower than consensus estimates, increased regulatory risk in the European Union, threats from a strong Apple product cycle, search contract renewal uncertainty from Firefox and Apple, as well as a sharp rise in capital expenditures, wages, etc. Bank of America’s opinion is that it is becoming more expensive to run Google.
Disclosure: No long or short positions in GOOGL |