Name a smartphone. Did you just say iPhone? If you did, that’s because Apple created the modern smartphone. It wasn’t the first company to make a phone that browsed the web, sent and received emails or performed basic productivity duties, but it transformed smartphones from boring businessy work handsets into things of beauty that appealed to the Everyman.
Despite being very late to the mobile phone party, Apple has managed to dominate the smartphone landscape. That’s because it waited until it got its phone right before releasing it on the world. Now it may be about to do the same with a TV.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has backtracked on the company’s “TV’s just a hobby” stance and the company is now looking for an iOS software engineer with experience in “multi-view stereo and 3D reconstruction” and “cameras and surfaces in a 3D environment”.
If Apple is making a TV (and we believe it is), it won’t be interested in making a skinny, zero-bezel set with a glowing logo on the back. It will be more interested in beating the existing market offering. Apple will want to take the fight to the giants of TV – particularly Samsung – and win.
That means making an iOS-based smart TV, with the full gamut of apps from the App Store, a prospect that could bring other smart TV manufacturers to their knees. Oh, and one more thing… it does 3D.
If Apple is going to bring TV into its skinny portfolio, it needs to win on two counts to cause maximum destruction. Its TVs will be smart – and have access to more and better apps than any other. But if it can catalyse turning 3D into a mainstream event – as its iPhone catalysed mainstream adoption of smartphones – its success will be assured.
