The Wall Street Journal today published a report on Apple’s television plans. I had to read the story at least three times to really figure out what exactly was Apple doing when it comes to television. Here is my takeaway of the report:
- Apple is working on its own TV and it will use wireless streaming to get content. It will use Airplay, a wireless streaming technology developed by Apple.
- Apple has worked on integrating DVR and iCloud.
- Apple’s senior VP Eddy Cue is meeting with media companies.
- Cue is talking about various different technologies that would allow users to pick-up streams of video on different device. Actually that is par for course – Hulu, Netflix and Amazon already do this.
- Apple will use voice commands and hand gestures to control Apple TV and look for content. Well, they did launch Siri on iPhone 4S and it makes most sense that Apple would move SIRI into other devices including television, which is not quite conducive to qwerty-style keyboards. The New York Times had provided hints of this Siri-based television interface in a report published in October 2011.
- Apple is not saying what devices or what specific software it is building on and it is not clear what it wants from the media companies. Hello! Should we be surprised that Apple is being Apple.
My interpretation on the WSJ story is that Apple is continuing to work on its hobby project, making progress and is integrating all sorts of technologies. Apple clearly has to do something or let Google runaway with the Internet TV business. As Janko Roettgers pointed out earlier, Google TV has little or no competition when it comes to next generation TV-oriented operating system. Someday in the future there will be a new device from Apple that manages to overcome the shortcomings of current television ecosystem.
The streaming set-top box market will reach about 12 million in 2011 and Apple will have about a third of that market with 4 million devices, according to research firm, Strategy Analytics.
My own personal bet is that Apple comes up with a newer, even smaller version of its Apple TV with higher end graphics, more processing oomph and ability to seamlessly detect all Airplay enabled devices on a WiFi network.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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