Thursday Apple Rumors: Apple in Talks for iTV Content

by Christopher Freeburn | August 22, 2013 12:49 pm

[1]Here are your Apple rumors[2] and AAPL news items for today:

Shift: After reaching an impasse with cable TV providers, Apple (AAPL[3]) has begun negotiating directly with content providers[4] to obtain programming for its iTV, Quartz notes. Apple is said to be discussing deals relating to a television set and not a set-top box. An Apple TV set would present programming structured into various apps, the report indicates. The company is apparently considering the launch of its own subscription TV service offered through the new television set. The report indicates that Apple is talking to Disney‘s (DIS[5]) ESPN and Viacom (VIAB[6]), among other media companies. The iPad-maker may be willing to launch its own TV set even before it has agreed to deals with most content providers. Rumors of an Apple television set have circulated for years, but took a back seat to reports that the company was focusing on a set top box earlier this year. Earlier this month, Apple acquired Matcha.tv, a media content aggregating app for an undisclosed price.

Slide: During the second calendar quarter of this year, Apple’s share of the Chinese tablet market fell markedly[7], the Associated Press notes. During the second quarter of 2012, the iPad accounted for 49% of tablet shipments in China. That fell to 28% during the second quarter of 2013, even though iPad sales in China climbed 28% to 1.48 million units. The iPad’s lower market share was blamed on a proliferation of cheap tablets running Google‘s (GOOG[8]) Android operating system produced by Chinese manufacturers.

Again: Millions of users of Apple’s cloud storage service experienced an outage on Thursday[9], CNET notes. According to a message from Apple, under 1% of iCloud users are having difficulty connecting to their accounts. That means the outage is affecting a little less than 3 million users. There are current about 300 million iCloud users worldwide. The current outage began on Wednesday evening and was still ongoing on Thursday morning. iCloud has experienced a number of recent service disruptions. The current outage affects iMessage, Documents in the Cloud,  Photo Stream and Backup and Restore.

For more about the company, check out our previous Apple Rumors[10] stories.

Source URL: https://investorplace.com/2013/08/thursday-apple-rumors-apple-in-talks-for-itv-content/

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