LG, Sony, Vizio announcing Google TV devices at CES, Samsung later in the year

Eric Schmidt predicted last month that the “majority” of TVs sold by summer 2012 would have Google TV, and the company’s certainly signing up the partners to make that a reality: Google just announced that LG, Sony, and Vizio will be showing off Google TV devices at CES 2012, with additional devices from Samsung coming later in the year. Google’s also partnering with MediaTek and Marvell to provide the next generation of ARM-based chipsets for Google TV — Marvell already announced that its new Armada 1500 chip would support Google TV devices. The news isn’t really a surprise; we’ve long suspected the platform would move to ARM, LG rumors have been swirling for a couple months, and Samsung’s deal to use the platform was news in November as well. Google also says there are now over 150 apps for Google TV in its app store after the platform was updated to Honeycomb in late October, and it says it says its activations rates have doubled since the update.

That’s all good news, but Google’s got a lot to prove this time around: the first wave of Intel-powered Google TV devices flopped so hard that former partner Logitech ended up firing its CEO and calling the entire effort a “mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature.” We’ll see if Google’s learned from those mistakes and — most importantly — if it’s made any progress integrating its platform with TV and content providers since last year. Onwards to CES.