The eagerly anticipated next generation of Apple TV won’t launch this year, even though it was rumored that it would make its debut this year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook made a habit from teasing the company’s fans with a “exciting new product categories” list that fails to impress, as of late. Apple TV does not exactly qualify as a new product, but most people assumed that it will get redesigned in order to include new functionality, and that the new version will hit the market sometime this fall, along with the iPhone 6 and the will-it-ever-get-launched iTime smartwatch.
In their sessions of wishful-thinking, Apple fans hope that the company will integrate gaming, audio and video streaming, as well as third-party apps. The Information claims that such a device won’t be ready for launch this year. Sources familiar to the matter pointed out that the Apple engineers who are designing the product have been told by their superiors to take their minds off a possible launch this year.
Just to pass the ball around, Apple bosses said that the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger and the cable companies are at fault for this delay. It looks like Apple’s partners are hesitant as to the real potential of the device and service, the biggest problem being the great number of rights Apple should acquire in order to provide the things it teased the world with.
The Information‘s Jessica E. Lessin and Amir Efrati elaborated on this matter: “On the content side, cable executives and TV programmers say Apple has bit off more than it can chew and deny they’re the holdup. They say Apple needs permission from multiple types of rights holders to create the service it wants to offer.”
The negotiations may take a while, and I’m really curious what Apple will do if things don’t go the way they want. This is probably what happens when a tech company promises something before knowing for certain if it can deliver or not. It remains to be seen where things are headed with this next-gen Apple TV, but this delay is definitely an opportunity for the competition to develop alternatives full of features that usually run at a much smaller price.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Rolomotion app that brings console gaming to Apple TV, and Apple’s rumored content deal with Time-Warner and ComCast.
