Apple dominates music players, online music, smart phones and tablet computers. Steve Jobs’ dream was to dominate the TV business, too.
There is no shortage of speculation, rumor or innuendo about iTV. Since I am in the business of detecting change before the crowd and building positions in stocks before Wall Street catches on, I carefully study the rumors. However, until recently I did not find anything in the rumor mill that will help Apple dominate the TV business in the same way it dominates other businesses.
I keep coming back to the following statement Tim Cook made to his shareholders earlier this year,
You can be assured we are working as hard as ever this year to deliver an incredible year and some products that will blow your mind.
Apple is a very secretive company. I have found two sources that are a treasure trove of information. One is the litigation that Apple is involved in and the second is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Could it be that the secret weapon Apple has to win the TV business is advertisement skipping technology? There is some credibility to this line of thinking. If Apple was the only company offering TV sets where commercials could be skipped on live TV, Apple would have an edge.
Yesterday Apple was granted patent number 8,249,497 for ad skipping technology. Here is the abstract:
Systems and methods are provided for seamlessly switching media playback between a media broadcast, such as a radio broadcast, and media from a local media library.
