Apple TV – rumours and reality
Rumours continue to be rife about exactly when, how and what Apple are planning within the TV space.
The reality at the moment is that their set top box offering, Apple TV, is still selling relatively well considering some suggestions of it being a flop. Speaking at the press conference to accompany their recent financial statement, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company had sold 1.4 million Apple TVs during that quarter.
As Rapid TV News points out, although these figures are much lower than their flagship iPhone and iPad products, it still represents a hugely impressive achievement, accounting for a third of the total 4.2 million shipments the product line has made since launch.
Looking at the rumours, after Steve Jobs’ untimely death, there were immediate suggestions that Apple were close to launching an Apple-branded smart HDTV, especially after a reference in his biography where he believed he had “cracked” the secret to a simple and elegant TV user interface.
Further evidence fuelling the rumour mill includes a patent that has been issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office for “a computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving episodic content including one or more episodes of television programs and storing the episodic content in a data store.”
Rapid TV News believes that the claim seems to describe a cloud-based mechanism for receiving information from various providers and then making that available on-demand via the Web, effectively syncing content across devices.
Additionally, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster claims to have spoken to a “major TV component supplier” who reportedly told him that Apple had contacted “regarding various capabilities of their television display components.” Munster suggested that the news was “continued evidence that Apple is exploring production of a television.”
Apple have not confirmed or denied any of these rumours, and are probably just rubbing their hands with glee at the free PR that these create, fuelling anticipation for a product that may or may not exist.