“While consistently branded as a being ‘hobby’ for Apple, sales of its $99 Apple TV set top box had made it the most popular device in the category, predicted to sell nearly 4 million of the the nearly 12 million TV boxes in the market,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.

“A report by Strategy Analytics, Apple is the leading set top TV box vendor, ahead of dedicated TV box systems from Boxee, Iomega and Roku, TV box products by hard drive vendors Western Digital and Seagate, and Android-based Google TV licensees Sony and Logitech,” Dilger reports. “‘Apple is leading this nascent market, which it still considers a ‘hobby,’” says Jia Wu, Strategy Analytics’ Senior Analyst of the Connected Home Devices (CHD) service.”

Dilger reports, “The marketing firm noted that only 8 percent of US households currently own a ‘connected TV’ player, but of that population, 32 percent have chosen Apple’s model. Additionally, among connected TV users, more Apple users were actually paying for TV and movies. The firm found that 30 percent of Apple TV owners paid to rent movies or TV shows, compared to just 20 percent of users of other devices.”

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Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors, “According to the report, Apple is predicted to reach sales of four million Apple TV units for 2011.”

“Rumors are increasingly pointing to the debut of a connected television set from Apple as soon as late next year. Such a device would presumably integrate many of the aspects of the current Apple TV box such as iTunes Store access and streaming from iOS devices directly into the television set,” Slivka reports. “Apple is also said to have been working on revolutionary Siri-powered voice input for interacting with the television.”

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