There is nothing more enthralling about the Tech Industry and Silicon Valley than a Tech Rumour. Truth be told, it’s really gossip, just over gadgets, not pretty long haired nubile vixens. But it might as well be a devil in a blue dress, as gadgets are as much desired, but quite elusive. Tech Rumours are, in a nutshell, an oft expressed desire for a product or improvement to a product that “everyone you know” likes.
I personally pined about the Apple iPod Nano having support for Bluetooth headsets in my article Prediction: The iPod Nano Watch – Time has a New Standard, being as I have a thing for watches. I even went out on a limb and did a series of articles on products that I was watching and praying to the Technology Gods would experience the Lazarus Effect, rising from near dead thanks to technological advances, the intro to this series being the article Microsoft Kin, Sony Dash, Chrome OS and Google Nexus One – The Comeback Kids.
Even the Sony Walkman did not escape my wearied glance, as I have expressed a desire for its revival a la SSD (Solid State Drives) and proof of my theory, the Lazarus Effect, in the intro to my article Motorola Xoom – 101 on How to Beat the Apple iPad.
So current ongoing rumours over the Apple Television Set as reported by TechCrunch and MacRumour on Tuesday June 21st 2011AD, which I first spotted back in September 2010AD on CNET hit the sweet spot in terms of Tech rumors. Granted, I could have mentioned Apple iPhone rumors, but I have already put my speculative thought on that in print in the article Towards a cheaper Apple iPhone – Batteries Not Included: Apple is planning to release a cheaper version of the Apple iPhone to target the so-called underserved “feature” phone market.
Like duh-uh!!! Case closed on the Apple iPhone 5…or 4S…or whatever it desires to call itself.
Next!!
Despite what you may think, though, this Apple Television Set is within the realm of practicability and possibility. Apple had been doing some research into 3D displays without the need for glasses as mentioned in my article 3D HDTV – Next Big Thing or Next Big Niche, a patent filing that strongly points to them making an Apple-branded Television Set, but with 3D capability sans the cumbersome glasses.
The pricey US$1699 27” Apple iMac is really an All-In-On PC, akin to the HP Pavillion All-In-One MS216. Speculation is rife that the alleged Apple Television Set will basically be a shell of the Apple iMac, but with a docking cradle or port for the Apple iTV. Probably even controlled using the Apple iPhone as a remote of no remote at all!
Not your typical buyer would shell out big bucks for such a device but hardcore fans of the Apple iTV would support such an option, as Apple typically makes hardware to support their products. Plus, there are not a lot of options for superb HDTV flat panel Television Sets out there yet for IPTV set top boxes.
Also, the mere fact that Apple can make a 27”Apple iMac for US$1699 that supports auxiliary viewing, suggests strongly that a shell Television Set costing around US$1000 that is dockable with the Apple iTV is possible, bringing Apple iMac viewing to the masses and give the Roku and the Boxee IPTV set top boxes a run for their money.
Hopefully, this dream machine would have the following basic specs:
- 3D without glasses
- Retina Display
- Augmented Reality Advertising using QR Codes
- FaceTime Video Calling
- PrimeSense’s Kinect 3D Motion Capture Technology
- iOS and Mac OS 10.1 Lion support
- Apple iCloud storage and synchronization playback
Thus I am pleased to announce that there is some credibility to those rumours of an Apple Television Set, or at least a reason why the Cupertino Kids may even consider such a crazy contraption. This is in the form of the recent stats by analyst DisplaySearch, who have put pen to paper after scratching their noggins over their analytical models and projected five hundred million (500,000,000) Web-connected Television Sets to be sold by 2015AD.
The stats look even rosier when a graph is brought into play:
In 2011AD alone, 25% of all flat-panel TV’s will be capable of going on the Internet and its is expected to hit a peak of 47% by the Fourth Quarter of 2011AD, roughly around the same time that Cisco expects the number of Internet connected devices to quadruple to fifteen million (15,000,000) as the below graph shows.
The results are best summarized by DisplaySearch Director of TV Electronics Research, Paul Gray, quote: “The adoption of connected TV is not just taking place in developed regions. Emerging markets often have good broadband services, and there is a thirst from consumers to get the best content available.”
Couple this trend with:
- The worldwide expansion of Wireless 4G Broadband and Wired ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) and Cable DSL as my article LIME, Digicel and FLOW – Leading the Global 4G Adoption Curve posits.
- The increasing trend of cord cutting among the Television viewing populace of the Developed and increasingly the Developing World
- Projections of a doubling of 3DTV sets in 2011 by analyst FutureSource, have now been superseded by analyst InStat who projects a five fold increase in 3DTV purchases, mainly due to bungling of the capability into HDTV’s
- The coming of Netflix to Latin America as stated in Kelroy’s article Netflix service coming to the Caribbean and Latin America, a service whose traffic is now 29.7% of all Streaming and downloading in North America and climbing.
Thus folks I put it to you that not only are the Apple Television Sets very possible by 2012, whether OR NOT the price is right, but the coming extinction of Broadcast Free-To-Air Television and Cable Television in the Western Hemisphere will be televised by 2012AD and complete by 2015AD.
Stay tuned….