Apple CEO Tim Cook just didn’t talk with Businessweek today in an unpredecented interview, he’s also going to be on NBC’s “Rock Center” tonight talking to Brian Williams… and in a new preview of the upcoming episode, Tim Cook has hinted strongly that Apple will be entering the HDTV market sooner rather than later.
Here’s a quote from the Rock Center preview over at NBC’s website:
What’s next for Apple? Did Cook leave us with a clue?
“When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years,” Cook told Williams. “It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.”
Presumably, Tim Cook actually has an Apple TV set-top box, so he’s not talking about that. He’s talking about an actual television set, not a box or other peripheral.
Here’s a video from the upcoming episode:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Of course, as intensely interested as Apple might be in producing a real television set, it might be hard to enter the television space. Previous reports have indicated that as much as Cupertino wants to get into the HDTV game, the existing cable companies and content owners don’t want to make deals under Apple’s terms, having seen what Apple has done to the music and smartphone industries before them.
Still, if Apple ever really wants to enter the living room, they have to build an HDTV eventually… and Tim Cook seems to know it. Let’s hope it comes soon.
Source: Rock Center
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
