On Thursday, Jefferies analyst James Kisner revealed that the much-anticipated Apple television, the product we’ve been talking about for well over a year, is almost ready to make its big debut. In fact, Kisner said its launch was “imminent.”
According to sources for AllThingsD, however, it’s not quite as close as Kisner would have you believe. While Apple has indeed held talks with a number of large cable companies, it seems it hasn’t yet spoken to TV programmers. With that in mind, it seems the Apple television is some way off just yet.
“Our discussions with industry contacts suggest that at least one major North American multiple system operator is working to estimate how much additional capacity may be needed for a new Apple device on their broadband data network,” Kisner wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. “We believe this potentially suggests an imminent launch of the Apple TV.”
Of course, it’s hard to tell what Kisner meant by “imminent,” but based on my understanding of the word, it means the Apple television is very close — at least not more than a couple of months away. So could it be that those reports that claimed we wouldn’t see an Apple set until at least 2013 were all wrong?
Not according to AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski. While he confirms that Apple has been in talks with some of the larger cable companies regarding “some new TV product,” Paczkowski says that the idea the product is imminent is “harder to take seriously.”
“If Apple were close to launching a new service, it would almost certainly be in touch with TV programmers about new arrangements, and we haven’t heard anything along those lines,” Paczkowski writes.
“In other words, there are still a lot of missing pieces here, and while a major cable provider running what-if scenarios on a rumored Apple product is certainly interesting, it’s not necessarily a trumpet fanfare announcing its imminent arrival.”
You’d better scrub out the Apple television you added to your Christmas list yesterday, then, because just as we expected, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Source: AllThingsD
