CES 2012: Lenovo K91 Smart TV Powered by Android Ice Cream Sandwich

It seems that 2012 will be the year of the smart TV, with Lenovo being the first manufacturer of clever televisions to break cover at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Where smart televisions have previously used their own - slightly clunky - operating systems, the Lenovo K91 is powered by Android's Ice Cream Sandwich, making it the first television to use a mobile operating system.

The K91 is a 55-inch 3D LCD television powered by a 1.5GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, resulting in creating a heavily blurred line between desktop computer and conventional television - a line that we expect to be crossed both ways in 2012.

By using Android, the Lenovo K91 brings with it a comprehensive user interface that will be familiar to many of its users, and one which will almost certainly offer access to the Android app store.

This means that games and apps built for Android smartphones and tablets - such as the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Tab from Samsung - will work on the K91 television.

We'd also expect to see functionality between mobile Android devices and the television, hopefully allowing control of the TV from an Android phone or tablet, and the ability to stream content from one to the other.

The Lenovo K91 will initially only be available in China, but we'd expect it to appear in other countries soon after release; pricing is yet to be announced.

With the Apple television widely rumoured to be announced and released later this year, many companies will be racing to beat the Cupertino giant to the market with smart televisions of their own.

CES 2012 runs from January 9 until January 13 and we're expecting to see smart TVs from Sony, Samsung and LG, with the latter to run Google TV software.