Business News
Steve Jobs biography sparks Apple TV rumours
Oct 24, 2011, 20:08 GMT
San Francisco - Steve Jobs told his biographer that he had cracked the problem of creating an effective interactive television, fueling rumours that Apple will release such a device next year.
Jobs made the comments to author Walter Isaacson, whose portrait of the technology visionary was released Monday.
Titled simply Steve Jobs, the book is the only biography authorized by the Apple co-founder, who granted Isaacson some 40 interviews to outline the parameters of his life from his early years as an adopted child to his last months, as he raced to finish the development of products when he knew his death was imminent.
The book revealed that one of Jobs' most cherished goals was to crack the television market in the same way that the iPod transformed the music sector and the iPhone revolutionized mobile phones.
While Apple, along with rival Google, has tried in the past to meld the interactivity of the web with traditional television viewing, the failure to create a web-integrated television that appeals to the mass market has been one of Jobs' most notable failures. But in his biography he indicated that he had finally come up with the solution.
'I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. ... It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,' he is quoted as saying in the book. 'I finally cracked it.'
The passage prompted technology industry analysts to begin detective work among large component suppliers to see if Apple had been looking for television parts.
In a note to investors, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said that he had confirmed that Apple 'is investing in manufacturing facilities and securing supply for LCD displays' for televisions and already has prototypes in the works. He notes that his firm has 'long believed that Apple was planning to launch an all-in-one television in late 2012 or 2013.'
Munster's forecast was seconded by another analyst, Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities, who said that his firm had uncovered evidence that an 'Apple smart TV was already flowing through factories over in China and in early-stage pilot and prototype production.'
