dhellman re: Apple and TV
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Apple went big into the business of designing Apple-branded TVs, or at least partnering with TV manufacturers, especially when using voice recognition on a cell phone as a primary user interface, which would be a big differentiator between Apple and everyone else. Heck, I was writing about that even before the iPhone came out:
siliconinvestor.com
I'm somewhat surprised that it has taken Apple this long, actually (I wrote that previous message almost 5 years ago, built on similar musings written even earlier). I suppose there are good reasons to have waited this long, my guess being that only now has the state of the art ultra-low-power CPU (A5 or better) caught up with voice recognition software as good as Siri.
Could Apple contract with a TV manufacturer to build Apple-branded TVs? Sure. Heck, that might even be an opportunity to bring back the TV manufacturing business (or at least the final-assembly business) to the United States in more than a token way -- that's been tried at least once since Zenith closed up its manufacturing shop here in 1995, but not successfully in big way. Wouldn't that be a coup! Heavy use of robotics in the assembly process might also go a long way towards leveling the playing field vis a vis the labor cost advantage in China.
My kids break or lose our home entertainment remotes on a regular basis, and a convergence of the remote controllers for home entertainment devices (and other home automation/network components) with a device that Apple already wants you to have (and which many people already own -- the iPhone) seems like a natural way to grow Apple's business over the next decade.
Keep up Steve's groove, Tim! |
