News
2010-01-07
Apple May Next do For TV What it Has Done For the Mobile Phone
You can feel it’s on its way. First Netflix on the Xbox 360, now Sky Player; Yahoo widgets on Samsung TVs in the US; TVs with ethernet connections. This whole internet-meets-TV thing just has to happen sometime soon.
In truth, though, the internet-meets-TV thing has been around for quite some time. Microsoft’s MSNTV set-top box brought clunky screen layouts and peculiar navigation but was a workable way to view a limited set of web content, more or less. And its Windows Media Centre has for years been letting people build applications that work on PC-connected TVs.
Then, of course, there’s Apple TV. Launched in 2006, it will play all your digital content from iTunes or YouTube on hi-definition TVs. By connecting with the iTunes Store, you can buy and rent movies and buy TV shows, songs, albums, music videos and audio podcasts. It hasn’t been a resounding success, though. Why buy another box for under the TV? A software update in 2008 allowed the device to act as a standalone box, no longer requiring a computer running iTunes to stream content. The world bought a couple more then turned over and went back to sleep.
Yet I put it to you that Apple will take this category, make it its own and rock your world. If it has any sense − and it seems to − Apple will do to TV what it did to the mobile industry with the iPhone.
Before the iPhone, most mobile phone interaction was confined by the keypad and it was next to impossible to get new software on a phone. Right now, most TVs are confined by the remote control and it’s next to impossible to get any software on a TV. The opportunity to change the game is the same.
You can control Apple TV using your iPhone, so don’t be surprised if the touchscreen Apple tablet everyone’s expecting will act as a remote. And Apple will create a development platform, as it did with the iPhone SDK. Anyone will be able to put an app on the TV screen.
By my reckoning Apple will also cut a bunch of deals to have live channels and a lot of content to stream - like CNN meets Hulu on steroids - and a bunch of cable companies will sit with their heads in their hands. Because once you start to timeshift your viewing, there really is no point having a cable subscription. Apart from live news and sport, you watch everything else at your convenience. If you’re in the TV advertising business, you too might want to pause for thought on that one. Apple could do to the TV advertising industry what the MP3 did to the music business. I hope that pause wasn’t too unsettling.
Source: NMA