“In my humble opinion, the entire debate over whether Apple ships an actual TV set and introduces some updated iTunes video package is a complete sideshow for a broader and bigger phenomenon and transformation for how we all use TV, and that this transformation is already being rolled out by Apple,” Jeremy Allaire, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Brightcove, writes for AllThingsD.
“Apple will not anytime soon launch a competitive subscription video product to cable. There are deep structural and contract rights issues that limit their ability to do so, and Apple does not want to buy their way into premium content from top-tier broadcasters who are collectively making hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide from subscriber fees shared from Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs — e.g. Cable, Telco, and Sat TV),” Allaire writes. “Given this, I believe Apple will seek partnerships with the top cable companies for them to open up their APIs for their EPG, VOD libraries and Network DVR infrastructure so that Apple can offer a superior user experience on top of those services, in a carrier/operator independent manner, much as they did with the mobile telephony services of the leading telephony carriers in the world.”
Allaire writes, “While this is likely the path Apple will pursue in the mid-term, I believe they are unlikely to get any of the very top-tier TV operators like Comcast and Time Warner to go for their proposal… To understand where I think Apple is headed, one really needs to step back and re-conceptualize how one thinks about TV. In my view, TV is the last screen to fall as a computing platform. What do I mean by this? That we should think of TV screens and monitors as the final frontier in Internet-based software applications, not as devices to watch and consume video content.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.