Jobs bio fosters resurgence in Apple-branded TV rumors
The Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs has just been officially released and now everyone from TUAW readers to Wall Street analyst Gene Munster is reading between the lines to see what Apple's "next big thing" will be. The biggest rumor? That Apple will be coming out with a branded HDTV that will revolutionize the television-watching experience.
A lot of us don't expect this to happen -- in a recent TUAW poll, about 57% of readers thought it was unlikely that Apple would every make a TV. But based on a statement in the biography, Munster is even more convinced that Apple is going that way -- and he's even starting to forecast revenues for an Apple HDTV line.
Munster has been "certain" of an Apple-branded TV since 2009, and according to Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-Dewitt, he keyed on a particular section of the book where Jobs said "I'd like to create an integrated television set. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud... It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."
Munster thinks that the "code" that Jobs "cracked" is combining live TV with shows that were previously captured and stored on iCloud. The Piper-Jaffray analyst also believes that Apple could add Siri support "to bolster its TV offering and simplify the chore of inputting information like show titles, or actor names, into a TV."
There are a number of meetings with suppliers and patent filings (including the one noted by Patently Apple in the screenshot above) that Munster cites as more evidence of an upcoming Apple TV. He goes on to show that the device, if released in 2012, could add as much as US$6 billion to Apple's bottom line in calendar year 2014.
