The potential for the rumored Apple-branded HDTV (the “iTV”) and a television-enabled iMac seems to be ripe. A new report from the Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com) says Internet television is growing faster than most folks realize.
Internet television is a new form of television service that is delivered over the internet to TV sets and other devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets.
By 2016, there will be over 480 million “smart TVs” deployed across the globe, all of which connected to the Internet, according to Research and Markets. And that’s not counting the around 100 million more that will be connected by other devices, such as games consoles, Blu-ray players and dedicated boxes.
It will have taken the cable, satellite and IPTV (Telco) TV industries over 60 years to build in excess of 500 major broadcast television networks that can together deliver Pay-TV service to nearly 900 million households. In contrast, the fixed broadband Internet will have reached a scale of 580 million in just 20 years.
I’m not sure when the iTV will arrive (late this year or early next, I suspect), but bring on that rumored iMac TV(http://www.macnews.com/2011/12/09/imac-tv-functionality-im-there) now.
— Dennis Sellers