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Apple working on a full-size hologram TV to launch next year?

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

September 17, 2011 | 3 min read

After the iPhone and the iPad, could the world's biggest pacesetter be about to spring another surprise?

The Apple TV could be available in the US by Christmas next year, predicts Ben Kunz, director of Internet strategy firm Mediassociates, writing in Bloomberg Business Week.

In his own blog, Thoughtgadgets.com, he says the triggers for the article were rumours that Apple's pipeline suppliers were gearing up to build Apple TV units - and a patent that Apple won last year for a new form of 3D.

"The patent provides a wonderful analysis of what is wrong with current 3D systems: users wear expensive goggles, awkward, and without goggles two or more people can't experience 3D at one time."

In Business Week he stresses is NOT talking about the little Apple-TV box that plugs into your set to stream Netflix, "but the real deal — a flat-panel Apple television set . . . designed as only Apple can do it," he says. Steve Jobs himself even gave a hint of things to come at the All Things Digital Conference last year . “The television industry … pretty much undermines innovation in the sector,” Jobs said. “The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign, and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it.” The potential prize for Apple is mind-boggling. TV is still "the king of all media," as Kunz puts it, with the US viewer watching 5 hours and 9 minutes of TV a day. But there is a huge amount of waste. The average U.S. home receives 130 cable channels - but only watches 18 a year. Channel surfing? Forget it. "A whopping 86% of available channels are never used by an individual viewer," says Kunz. With the average cable bill $75 per month, people are “cord cutting,” - dropping cable to watch videos on Roku, Hulu, or the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. Comcast lost 238,000 cable subscribers in one quarter this year. "If Apple were to offer a better service, people might pay up for it," says Kunz. Another lure for Apple is a potential slice of TV advertising. which reached $70 billion in 2010. There are, of course, many obstacles. But, Kunz points out, Apple has some $76 billion in cash and a history of entering unexpected partnerships. To "win the living room,"he says, Apple will need an innovation comparable to the iPhone — something that changes TV sets in a fundamental way. In the patent for the revolutionary 3D screen system that Apple won last year - allowing a number of people to view at the same time without glasses - the result was described as a hologram. Kunz concludes in Business Week: "Could Apple put holograms in every home, break the stranglehold of cable companies, and unlock a $14 billion TV revenue stream? It’s an audacious and perhaps crazy idea. Tim Cook, I like the way you think."
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