[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., today announced plans to release Tizen-based Samsung TV SDK, marking the industry’s first Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows developers to build applications for the Tizen-based TV.

Samsung’s Tizen-based TV SDK Beta will be available early July following the Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco from June 2-4th. The Tizen-based Samsung TV SDK Beta supports the HTML5 standard through its framework called Caph and enables developers to write apps that run on a Tizen OS -based TVs.

“We are excited to offer app developers the opportunity to experience this new platform in advance with the release of Beta SDK,” said YoungKi Byun, Vice President of Visual Display Business S/W R&D Team, Samsung Electronics. “With the ultimate goal of expanding the TV ecosystem for apps, we will continue our efforts to provide innovative functions and improve the development environment.”

Samsung’s new SDK marks the industry’s first attempt at significantly improving the development ecosystem by offering new technologies such as an interface for virtual TV apps development. Developers can now virtually see all necessary TV functions without a physical TV. Developers can also remotely modify code on their PCs with the new debugging feature, whereas in the past they had to connect directly to the TV’s software to correct application errors.

With increasingly sophisticated animation effects and designs, the Tizen-based Samsung TV SDK Beta also features various scenarios including Smart Interaction, allowing users to control their TVs with simple hand gestures and voice commands; and multi-screen, which can be used to link a TV with various devices including mobile and wearable gadgets.

The launch of Tizen-based Samsung TV SDK represents another step in Samsung’s larger efforts to encourage innovation in the developer community and enable full flexibility in UX design. Samsung will continue to actively work with Tizen to enable developers and operators to extend their reach to other connected devices.

Samsung’s Tizen-based TV SDK can be downloaded at the Samsung Developers Forum website, www.samsungdforum.com, starting in early July, 2014.