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Garside's chief source is Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies, a US investment bank. Not only does Misek believe the iTV is imminent, he also indicates that the rest of the market has begun to adjust accordingly. "Other TV manufacturers have begun a scrambling search to identify what iTV will be and do," Misek says. "They hope to avoid the fate of other industries and manufacturers who were caught flat-footed by Apple."
So is this the real deal? Well, possibly, although as plenty of tech pundits have scrambled to point out, an Apple iTV is far from a guaranteed success. Consider, for instance, the sheer amount of cheap, powerful television sets being produced today. Whereas Apple created its own product categories with the iPod and iPad, with the iTV, they would be vying against a cadre of established, well-entrenched players.
"I’m not saying that Apple should give up on a television product," Scott Raymond of ZDNet wrote recently. "I simply think that they should focus on an expanded product built on the existing Apple TV platform. Make it bigger. Add [recording] capabilities. Put Siri in it. Then allow it to be plugged into a TV of our own choosing. The market for televisions is huge because there are so many different categories that consumers want, based on size, location, affordability, and so forth."
