Yang Yongqiang, chief technology officer of the Chinese Internet video website Letv.com, announced the launch of a new project to support the development of TV applications.

According to the plan, Letv.com will cooperate with Shenzhen Capital Group and Innovation Works to invest CNY100 million to support TV applications developers over the next three years. These applications will mainly cover family games, videos, lifestyle information, social, and education. The financial support will be provided to developers in four ways, including debt for equity swaps, partial share holdings, whole stock purchases, and rolling investments.

Yang said the smart television market has entered a fast growth stage in China. In 2012, shipments of the entire TV market was over 40 million units, of which about 16 million were smart TVs. By 2015, the number will increase to about 60 million in China.

Yang also said that TV screens are the potential market for applications development. At present, Samsung, as the world’s largest TV maker, only has several hundred TV applications and Google has about 100 TV apps, which means it is easier to gain achievements in the TV application development sector.

Letv.com has formed good relationships with many TV makers, including Skyworth and Konka. It hopes to lead the development of the industry with its self-developed terminals, basing on its app platform, said Yang.