Reports from market analysts in the electronics trade indicate Apple is tuning in to release a third-generation TV. A note issued by investors this week explained the iPhone makers are expected to team up with Japanese firm, Sharp who specialize in TFT-LCD panels.
Production of the next-generation iTV is set to commence in February 2012 from a plant in Osaka, Japan with an expected release date later in the year, around mid-summer at the earliest – and competing HDTV makers are reportedly anxious to know just what Apple are planning to do to improve the technology if their TV service.
Peter Misek of market analysts, Jefferies wrote that Apples competitors, “hope to avoid the fate of other industries and manufacturers who were caught flat footed by Apple,” but voiced his concerns for mainstream TV manufacturers saying they “are likely to be at least 6 to 12 months behind in a best-case scenario.”
In an interview with his autobiographer in 2009, Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs expressed his desire to introduce a TV for the future. What resulted was a 2010 edition of the iTV, but initial freedback was far from positive. The little black box, no bigger than a web router, was an improvement on the clunkcy, over-sized and overly expensive first-generation TV and allows you to rent cheap movies and TV shows – but there are still drawbacks. Few networks are signed up to the service and availability is woefully limited. Needless to say, Apple TV has hardly taken the world by storm!
However, Apple look set to reinvent Jobs´ vision and his replacement CEO, Tim Cook has given the go-ahead to start production on the next-generation iTV – and in the process have their worried competitors scrambling for information.
In an interview written by Walter Isaacson, the man tasked with writing Steve Jobs´ biographer, the writer reported that before Apple´s visionary died he had expressed his desire to create a TV that would feature “the simplest user interface you could imagine.” Jobs also stated that television sets were unnecessarily difficult to use.
The details of the interview have led to industry insiders to speculate that the next-generation Apple TV will be programmed with a user-interface that incorporates Siri, the voice-recognition service that was introduced with iOS5 on the iPhone 4s earlier this year. This would give the user a hands-free navigational system and would mean you will never have to search for lost remote controls again or bang the base to try and revive more life in the battery.
Without the user-face capabilities of Apple´s iOS platform, other TV manufacturers are said to be looking towards Google to produce Android software with cloud capabilities much like the software currently found on smartphones that support film and music. So as manufacturers prepare for battle in the TV wars, expect major leaps in TV technology in the coming years.
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