Apple is working on a television for 2012, sources say
Apple is almost certainly working on a digital television based on its iOS operating system, according to multiple sources in Silicon Valley. — An Apple-based television makes sense in light of Apple's continued expansion …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's television ambitions have been circling since the Financial Times reported in December 2009 that the company was weighing an internet TV foray; this week's sourcing upgrades that from exploration to a concrete product claim — an iOS-based set reportedly targeted at 2012.
Timing matters: the report lands days after Steve Jobs handed the CEO job to Tim Cook and Apple shares fell more than six percent in after-market trading, so the rumored TV doubles as a test of whether the product pipeline survives the transition. It also lands mid-dispute with Samsung, fresh off Apple's Dusseldorf court victory over the Korean maker.
First-order effects
- If the sources are right, incumbent TV makers — Samsung foremost among them, already litigating against Apple in Germany — would face an entrant competing on software and ecosystem rather than panel price.
- Content owners become the immediate gatekeepers: an iOS television is only as viable as the studio and network deals Apple can sign, the open question left hanging since the 2009 foray report.
Second-order effects
- Pay-TV operators and set-top box vendors face a device that could route around their hardware, pressuring the rental-fee model that anchors their living-room position.
- Apple's installed iOS base becomes the distribution lever rivals lack — commentary already treats the iPad's app platform as a primary consumption surface, and a television would extend that same app economics to the biggest screen in the house.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the living room shifts from a hardware-margin business to a platform land-grab, where control of the screen means control of app distribution and media billing — the same structure Apple built on phones and tablets.
- A failed launch would instead reinforce the industry view that content rights, not industrial design, are the binding constraint on any computing company entering television.
The trend: Consumer electronics is moving from standalone televisions toward software-defined screens attached to app ecosystems, with Apple's entry the most consequential test of that shift.