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Apple’s push into `digital living room` startles Samsung, LG

Apple’s push into `digital living room` startles Samsung, LG

Posted August. 30, 2011 06:48,   

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Tim Cook, who took over as Apple CEO from Steve Jobs last week, is reportedly pursuing the creation of a “digital living room,” setting alarm bells for global consumer electronics makers.

The Wall Street Journal said Apple is working on new technology to deliver digital video to televisions, adding that such digital video and control of the living room will pose the first real test for Cook. The daily implied that the markets Apple is entrenched in, such as mobile phones and tablets, will expand to consumer electronics.

○ Apple joins Hulu takeover bid

Last year, Apple launched Apple TV, a service through which people can choose TV dramas and movies and download them directly to a set-top box. Industry sources say Apple could launch this time an independently developed smart TV.

Apple joined the acquisition bid for online video site Hulu, supporting this view. While Youtube specializes in user-generated content, Hulu features movies and TV shows with official licenses. If Apple beats Google and Yahoo! in the bid for Hulu, it can secure a firm foothold in tapping the TV business based on quality and quantity contents.

Apple recently filed a 3-D computing patent to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Rumors also have it that Apple demanded TV panels from LG Display, a major panel supplier for iPads and iPhones. When LG Display CEO Kwon Young-soo said his company will produce pilot panels for 55-inch OLED TVs by next year, industry sources said the announcement kept Apple TV in mind.

Consumer electronics sources say Apple will have a decisive impact on the home entertainment market once it makes inroads there. UBS analyst Maynard Um said, “Apple’s market value will increase by around 100 billion U.S. dollars when it makes a soft landing in the TV market.”

○ Samsung and LG alarmed

Apple is likely to add innovative functions to TVs, delivering a wholly different smart TV. When its rivals were competing over hardware, Apple created iTunes and App Store in delivering a new concept of content distribution and rapidly absorbing the entire ecosystem, including hardware.

Apple App Store has 500,000 iPhone applications and more than 100,000 for the iPad. Samsung Electronics’ smart TV has 500 applications and LG Electronics just 300.

Smart TV makers such as Samsung, LG and Sony have their own platforms, focusing on securing contents and applications. Once Apple taps into the TV market, however, they will lose ground.

Certain analysts, however, say TVs have a fundamentally different ecosystem compared with mobile devices. Apple’s success in the mobile world might not necessarily lead to success in TV, they say. Google launched Google TV by joining forces with Sony, but has yet to show visible marking.

A Samsung source said, “Smart TVs are in their beginning stage and have yet to have dominant power. As a global top TV manufacturer and on the back of specialized applications, Samsung will defend its market share with its longstanding knowhow.”

LG Electronics is betting on creating an easy and convenient user interface. “The first-generation smart TVs had a complicated menu system that offset the merits of good contents. The success in smart TV market lies on a simple user interface,” a company source said.



jaeyuna@donga.com