France’s Orange is in talks with TV manufacturers Samsung, LG and Panasonic to integrate its services with TVs connected to the internet, according to a report in French financial daily Les Echos.

The number of actors attempting to bring the connected TV vision to reality in Europe is quite diverse. I am organizing my analysis of the market by the following categories:

* Operators acting independently (Orange);
* Operators acting within the framework of the Open IPTV Forum;
* Content owners and CE manufacturers (HbbTV);
* Technology vendors (IBM WebSphere Portal, Yahoo! Connected TV, etc.); and
* Connected TV companies acting independently to sign deals with individual content owners/providers.