We already know that Apple is preparing their own video subscription service, and it was speculated to get launched in June at the WWDC 2015. However, a recent report by Re/code suggests that the launch might be a bit delayed, thanks to Apple’s ambitions to include local programming in the streaming service.

As originally reported, Apple’s subscription service will come with over 25 channels including ABC, CBS and Fox, and would be available at a monthly subscription fee of $30-$40.

But Apple apparently thinks this won’t be enough to lure in cable customers, as local stations would still need a cable connection. In order to encourage complete cord-cutting, Apple is taking it to the extreme by wanting to include local US stations in the streaming service.

This doesn’t look so odd to come from Apple as we reported recently that Apple halted their entire ultra-HDTV plans just because they couldn’t find a ‘breakthrough’ feature to compel users to switch.

However, addition of local channels to a subscription service of this magnitude is better said than done. For most cable operators, they only have rights to broadcast the channels and not the rights to the contents itself. Which means, Apple needs to engage individual stations separately to get their rights, and that takes time.

Business executives have told Re/code that Apple hasn’t started any such negotiations yet. A similar situation faced by HBO Go took them around 2 years to get the streaming rights to local channels. So it seems Apple is at least a few months, if not years, away from adding local stations to their subscription service.

At this time, Apple has two choices: to launch the service without local contents and add it later on or to delay the launch of the service itself. You might remember Gurman’s post on Apple TV 4, where he suggested that the next Apple TV will ship with current content model and the subscription service would be launched at a later date.

Reading all these together, we believe that we won’t see the launch of Apple’s subscription service at next month’s WWDC. However, the Apple TV 4 with better remote, new hardware, redesigned interface, Siri support and third-party apps is surely coming.

Read more on the Apple TV 4.

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As Apple TV users, we are always excited to hear rumours on Apple’s own television set. The latest one is the open letter which Carl Icahn sent today to Apple, where he predicts the company to release an Ultra HDTV next year. However, The Wall Street Journal confirmed hours later that Apple has no plans to enter the television market anytime soon.

WSJ says that Apple had been working on a television set for nearly a decade. The HDTV market was very competitive and hence, they were looking for a real “breakthrough” feature that would set them apart and convince users to switch. And as it seems, they never found any.

They tried adding a front camera to the television helping with FaceTime and video calling. They also experimented with different types of displays, but none were compelling enough.

As such, Apple dropped its TV project a year ago. They didn’t dissolve the team working on it but just reallotted them to work on other devices, probably the Apple TV 4. Apple plans to reform the team and continue its television plans as soon as the company comes up with that breakthrough feature.

So for the time being, Apple is focused solely on its next set-top box for media consumption, which is expected to be announced next month at WWDC 2015.

Read more on the Apple TV 4 release date, hardware, software and apps.

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There is no doubt Apple will release a new Apple TV model sooner or later, the only question is when. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, the Apple TV 4 could be launched this fall:

With WWDC just four months away (likely June 2015), we believe talk about an update to Apple TV (not a television) could pick up over the next few months. Despite our belief in an actual television being unrealized so far, we continue to believe that TV is an area of focus for Apple and the most likely area for innovation now that the Apple Watch has been announced. We believe the most likely path to a TV would be an update to the Apple TV hardware and software that potentially integrates content, gaming, and HomeKit in the fall of 2015 and a television at least a year later. As we move toward the Apple Watch launch in April, we believe investors will be looking for the next big new product for Apple, which we believe will be focused around the TV.

Gene Munster is known for his predictions on Apple’s television set. Well, failed predictions, to be exact. But reading together with other rumors we’ve been hearing about the new Apple TV, we can be sure of one thing – the Apple TV 4 is real and is coming out for sure.

Also read:

• New beta turns Apple TV into the master of HomeKit

• Forbes: Apple TV will be the center of Apple’s smart home

• After Apple Watch, the next big thing is Apple TV

• Apple Watch and AirPlay: what Apple’s smartwatch means to Apple TV users

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Citing “industry executives”, Recode is reporting that Apple is in talks with TV programmers about launching its own “over the top pay-TV service”, similar to Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s new Web TV service.

The theory is that Apple would put together bundles of programming — but not the entire TV lineup that pay-TV providers generally offer — and sell it directly to consumers, over the Web. That means Apple wouldn’t be reinventing the way TV works today, but offering its own version of it, with its own interface and user experience.

According to Recode, Apple has already shown programmers demos of the proposed service but the whole project seems to be in the early stages, meaning “terms like pricing and timing aren’t close to being ironed out”.

Also read:

• After Apple Watch, the next big thing is Apple TV
• Apple TV will be the center of Apple’s smart home
• Gene Munster now expects the Apple TV set in 2016

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We’ve been hearing rumors of a gesture-based interface for the Apple TV since Apple acquired PrimeSense, the company behind motion sensors for the Microsoft Kinect. We’ve also seen Apple applying for many patents regarding the same in the past but, we expected all of them to just disappear into the heaps of patents Apple frequently avails but never uses.

However, this non-tactile gesture-based UI might indeed become a reality, as indicated by the brush-ups Apple has been doing recently. Last month, Apple reassigned the patents for the PrimeSense motion detecting hardware to its name. And a couple of days back, Cupertino was granted a new patent for a software built to work alongside this hardware.

This is what we know about the patent named “Three dimensional user interface session control”. Apple’s sensors will use infrared rays to track your hand movement in 3D, meaning in x-axis (when you move you hand to right or left), y-axis (raise or lower your hand) and even z-axis (towards or away from the sensor).

Users will be able to make simple hand gestures like waving to interact with the interface. One example illustrated in the application shows a swipe-up movement to unlock the device (image on top).

The artwork portrays a computer in the center but can be used by the Apple TV, the Apple television set or even the future Macs and iPhones. The patent gets a bit detailed about how the interface would work in various scenarios. If you’re interested, you can go through this detailed analysis by Apple Insider.

Unlike the patents that we usually see, the fact that Apple is actively refreshing and adding to this technology is some clue that they’re indeed moving on with this concept. Maybe we won’t see an Apple TV with 3D gesture control this year, but it would surely be something to look forward to in the later versions of our favorite set-top box.

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Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, is known for his predictions about Apple’s television set. Well, failed predictions, to be exact. Even after all of his predictions were proved wrong, Munster still doesn’t want to give up on the long-rumored Apple television, as he has now places the Apple HDTV launch date for sometime in 2016.

ALSO CHECK OUT: The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide for Apple TV users

In 2011, the analyst said at the IGNITION conference that the Apple HDTV will reach stores before the 2012 Christmas season. But as soon as he picked up that he could be wrong, he changed the expected date to be in December, 2013. Time proved him wrong again, but he has been keeping mum on the subject since then.

Now, in an interview with Business Insider, Munster dug up the dirt again to announce his new ETA for the Apple HDTV – but this time, it’s two years away. This is because he has noticed that Apple usually takes a couple of years before jumping into a new product category and judging by the Apple Watch launch dates, 2016 seems promising for the Apple HDTV.

Taking his prediction a step further, he even says that Apple will sell 22M units of its standalone TV set in the first year and thereby occupy a 10% share in the 220M market.

Only a patient wait will tell if he’s right this time. But reading together with other rumors we’ve been hearing, we can be sure of one thing – the new Apple TV (set-top box or standalone TV se) is real and is coming out for sure.

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Popular activist investor Carl Icahn recently published an open letter to Tim Cook, asking for an increased share buyback from the company. And among other products mentioned in the letter, he points to an earlier discussion regarding the possibility of Apple releasing its own television set in 2016.

Apple has long time ago stated that they weren’t interested in a HDTV lineup since their upgrade cycles are pretty long. But Icahn says that the ultraHD TV will replace the normal HDTV by 2016, and this upgrade cycle would be a huge opportunity for Apple to step into the television business.

[..]we believe UltraHD’s (ultra-high-definition television) superior picture quality in comparison to regular HD will drive a major TV replacement cycle as the price gap between them narrows.

It should also be noted that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, has referenced UltraHD as a major catalyst for Netflix going forward, and while this is true for Netflix, we believe it is also true for Apple.

Against the backdrop of this replacement cycle, FY 2016 represents an opportune time to introduce an UltraHD TV set.

Icahn forecasts that the Apple TV set would be sized between 55 and 65 inches, and be priced around $1500 (remember this Best Buy survey from 2012?). He even predicts that the TV set will sell about 12 million units in 2016 and more than double that in 2017.

He also tries to persuade Cook into the idea by citing the huge success of iTunes Store and how users would be able to enjoy UltraHD movies from iTunes through such high resolution screens.

We have been hearing rumors about the Apple standalone TV set for more than four years now, and earlier this year we received some contrasting reports on its development status. You can read all about the Apple’s HDTV here.

It is also worth remembering that rumors of an UltraHD TV from Apple filled the news in early 2013.

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We’ve heard it all about Apple’s television set, but it is generally assumed that the Apple HDTV development is currently on halt. However, an interesting post which appeared yesterday on Seeking Alpha says differently.

The post speaks about a graphics chip and display processing firm, PixelWorks, which Seeking Alpha believes to be a good stock to bet on, thanks to its new client, Apple Inc.

PixelWorks’ revenue has increased by 64% since last year and it is reported that about 14% of the total revenue comes from Apple. This kept analysts wondering if PixelWorks are working on the GPU of iPhone or iPad or even the new iWatch; but the released time slots and Apple’s usual production schedules weren’t adding up.

However on another note, the CEO of PixelWorks, Bruce Walicek hinted that they’re working on a ‘large-display project’ for a ‘major client‘, which leads the author to believe that the company is partnering with Apple to produce the graphics processors for the Apple television.

Here is what Walicek said during the conference call from the last earnings report:

“More importantly, though, Q1 was a key quarter of progress as we completed a number of critical milestones during the quarter that advanced progress on our key initiatives; first, we developed the mass-production version of the advanced SOC for large-screen applications we developed under our co-development partnership.

And during the quarter, we received mass-production qualification from our customer. This is a major milestone on this project, and we are on track for volume production to begin in the current quarter and ramp it in the second half of this year, which we believe will result in significant market-share gains in 2014 and beyond.”

Seeking Alpha author, 3D Analytics, believes PixelWorks is working on a large-display project for Apple:

Based on in-depth research by 3D Analytics, it is our conclusion that the Pixelworks-Apple bond is rooted in the development and production of Apple TV […]

Apple has yet to enter the large-display market, and based on its current intellectual property, it does not have all the technology to build a TV. This is where we see the largest benefit to Apple in partnering with Pixelworks.

For now, things are working out great for PixelWorks as their stocks are soaring high since the post first appeared on Seeking Alpha; they sold about 10 million stocks in one day, as opposed to last 30 day average of 0.7 million.

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In 2013, rumors about Apple-branded TV set were circulating day by day, but after some point, the spike just flattened out. Well, now we have a reason worth believing: Brian Blair, an analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, has told Business Insider that Apple indeed had plans to release their own standalone television set, but it was shelved in the mid-2013.

With Steve Jobs’ biography mentioning that he had “cracked” the code for an “integrated television set” and Tim Cook calling the TV market “an area of intense interest”, readers were already hinted of an Apple HDTV in the oven. Many concept designs and speculated unique features in relation to patent filings and acquisitions were flooding the web.

However, after his recent tour to Asia, Blair claims to have learned a lot on Apple’s television dreams. According to him, Apple was actively working on a prototype HDTV and even reached a stage where they started connecting with display panel makers. But at some point in 2013, Apple decided to put a halt on the project. The reasons being:

Some of the concerns around a TV are believed to revolve around 1) the unique logistics that surround the TV business (you can’t easily bring one into a store for repair, for example) and 2) features that would differentiate it from competitive offerings. It is believed in the supply chain that Apple is still trying to find a way to make the product work, though timing remains uncertain. We believe that Apple is focused on building up content and establishing differentiated media relationships before reconsidering TV plans again.

At the end of the day, we can only speculate that Apple will be concentrating more on the Apple TV set-top box for the time being and try to dominate the living room via the black box, rather than lighting up a couple million pixels. Maybe the long delay in the next Apple TV indicates great things are coming. Fingers crossed!

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Yesterday Apple released their 2013 Q4 numbers and spoiler alert – they sold a lot of stuff. Specifically, they sold a lot of iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs, and iTunes content, providing specific sales numbers for each of these categories. What wasn’t detailed is how many Apple TV’s were sold.

Very little is done without a reason at Apple, and the lack of clear communication surrounding the Apple TV may well be strategic. The last announcement of Apple TV sales was in May 2013 at the D11 conference, when Tim Cook stated that 13 million had been sold, with half sold in the prior year. Eight months have passed, and assuming the sales have held somewhat steady, it’s difficult to see how Apple can justify calling a product that has sold in the neighborhood of $2 billion a “hobby.” So why the silence?

Perhaps it’s time for Apple to “disrupt” the television space. If that is the plan, they are doing it in a classic Apple way, quietly building an installed base of around 20 million Apple TV’s. While that number pales in comparison to the number of iPhones, iPads, and iPods, it is a fairly significant number of larger screens. Let’s put it in perspective:

The top 5 US cable companies are:

Based on market share (numbers of subscribers)
Currently – January 2013 (numbers are approximate)

1. Comcast Corp.: 23 million
2. Time Warner Cable: 12 million
3. Cox Communications: 4.595 million
4. Verizon: 4.592 million
5. AT&T: 4.3 million

[source: Wikipedia]

Apple now has nearly the power of Comcast in terms of subscribers to their television service, and just like they did with music, they are going to the content producers instead of the retailers. Think of PBS, ABC, Disney, and HBO as analogous to the music labels, and Comcast and TW are today’s Blockbuster Video. Give the customers what they want, at a reasonable price, and remove players that add no value.

Everyone hates their cable company. Everyone. They are “safe” today for one reason and one reason only – most of the content producers are contractually tied to only offer much of their content only to paid cable subscribers. That is why most of the Apple TV “networks” require you to sign in to AT&T or COX before you can view live content, although we are seeing a trend to offer more and more content without this login requirement where possible.

As Apple reaches critical mass, they will have the same negotiating power that Comcast has, and those contractual handcuffs will fall by the wayside. The content producers will quickly realize that, in order for them to survive, they can’t ignore 20 million TV’s and 700 million smaller iOS screens that Apple brings to the table. Those numbers make Comcast seem pretty insignificant in comparison, and if they aren’t scared, they should be.

The other disrupting force in this market is Netflix. By provoking exclusively on-demand content, and branching out into original productions, Netflix has grown to 33.4 million subscribers, certainly giving HBO and Showtime pause. Netflix is able to build a direct relationship with its customers, and leverage rapidly evolving technology to satisfy their early-adopter customers and support 4K years before the cable TV companies will have upgraded their infrastructure. The combination of Apple TV and Netflix will force HBO and Cinemax to make changes to their business model, and that combined pressure will become an unstoppable force forward.

Apple has created a premium market and product suite for entertainment. Music, movies, books, and casual games exist on large part with Apple as one of, if not the, primary market and source of revenue for many developers and content producers. To date, Apple has limited Apple TV gaming to AirPlay from another iOS device or, more recently, OS X. So the final interesting possibility here is the A7 chip and it’s 64-bit capabilities. Few would argue that the iPhone 5S and iPad Air are unable to make full use of this chips possibilities, primarily due to power and space concerns. When these constraints are removed, the gaming possibilities of this platform become very interesting as well. Rumors are circulating, as they have before, that Apple is going to release an Apple TV SDK and open the platform to developers.

Apple has been quietly adding select content providers to their Apple TV ecosystem. This has allowed them to accomplish a few specific goals: stay under the radar of the cable providers, allow the device to gain more marketshare and approach that “critical mass,” and mature their API in infrastructure. There is a very big difference between selling a 4-minute song and streaming live video to tens of millions of devices. But don’t think for a second they they don’t have a plan and that they will, as they have done time and time again, disrupt an entire industry in the guise of releasing a product.

It’s what they do.

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