Companies grow through internal innovation as well as by acquiring new companies and their technology. For Apple, known to have a large cash base and a desire to compete more in the television space, the acquisition of Matcha.tv might be a nice step in supporting the next phase of their television platform initiative. At its core, Matcha provides a complete source of online and on TV programming for search and recommendation. "Matcha.tv was an iOS app that provided a comprehensive overview of
everything that’s available to watch via cable TV providers (Comcast), streaming video services (Netflix,
Hulu, Amazon Prime), and digital video stores (iTunes, Amazon).
Additionally, you could manage what you watched from a universal queue,
get video recommendations, and connect with social networks to see what
your friends were watching/liking." Given the multitude of options now out there, such a service could prove quite user friendly.
How Apple plans to integrate this application into Apple TV or other future products remains to be seen. Apple has a terrific product in its Apple TV box although talk continues that Apple would like to compete in the television manufacturing space with its own TV set. Certainly Samsung is ahead of Apple with its own Smart TV platform on its manufactured sets. The question, do consumers want to upgrade to an integrated internet connected set or do they like the ability to add boxes, from Apple TV to Roku to XBox to their TVs to enable a connection.
Walt Mossberg's article in today's Wall Street Journal provides a terrific overview of today's available internet options for their TV. Bottom line though, they all require a broadband connection and that means a subscription from your cable or telco provider. Video streaming requires bandwidth and to make sure your viewing experience is enjoyable and without buffering issues means paying more for more bandwidth. I see that problem today when multiple users are streaming videos while others are trying to download content.
