“When it comes to putting the ‘smart’ into TVs, this feels very much like the smartphone industry in the decade before the iPhone,” Richard Waters writes for The Financial Times. “All the technology ingredients are there, it just needs someone with the vision to show how the TV experience could be transformed – and the muscle to overcome the industry vested interests that delay change.”

“So no wonder all eyes have been on Apple. Last year was widely tipped as the year that Apple would remake the TV in its own image,” Waters writes. “Now it is meant to be 2013.”

Waters writes, “And Apple needs to colonise the TV set. This isn’t because of the direct profits it stands to make. Samsung, the industry leader, doubled its operating profit margin from consumer electronics (mainly TVs) in the first nine months of 2012 – but still didn’t manage to break 5 per cent. Apple makes more than twice as much profit from the iPhone in a single quarter as the entire TV industry is estimated to make in a year. Rather, Apple needs to occupy the TV set to be able to plant its flag squarely in the living room – before Google or some other rival gets there first.”

Much more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]