Apple has begun talking to media executives about the future of television as it prepares for a fresh “assault” on the television market, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Senior Vice President Eddy Cue has met with media companies to talk about how Apple will be able to authenticate users as they flit between television sets, tablets, and phones, according to the Journal.
Apple is also designing a television set that relies on wireless streaming to access content, the Journal reported.
Like Apple’s Siri voice-enabled personal assistant for the iPhone, Apple is working on technology that would let users control video content with their voice, according to the report.
Like Microsoft’s XBox Kinect, Apple’s new technology may respond to a user’s movments, according to the Journal.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has long dabbled in television. It introduced an updated version of its AppleTV set top box last year, even as it continues to describe the businesses as a “hobby.”
Apple observers and competitors have asserted for months that Apple will get deeper into the television business, eventually.
In October, Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died October 5, claimed to have ‘cracked’ it.
For more than a decade, technology companies have struggled to find a way to combine television, computing, and the Internet. Microsoft’s XBox, which began life as a game console, may be the most successful effort.
To be sure, even if Apple is quietly working on a television set, a new suite of cloud-based television services, or ways to better integrate its iPads, iPhones, and iPods with television sets built by other companies, there’s no guarantee Apple will introduce all -- or any -- of these products.
Indeed, the Journal made it clear that even many of Apple’s highest-ranking employees are in the dark about the company’s plan:
Last year, at its "top 100" meeting for senior managers in Carmel, Calif., an attendee asked Mr. Jobs whether Apple was developing a television.
He responded that it would be a bad business to get into, noting that the margins on television are far lower than the margins Apple makes from its other devices and that consumers don't buy new televisions very frequently, according to this person.
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