Apple Cook up new TV?

In December last year I hinted that I thought 2012 would be the year of the television. So far we have seen Samsung announce an amazing 55" OLED (Organic Light Emmitting Diode) TV at this year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show). We have now also received the biggest hint yet that Apple will be launching itself further into the television market.

When Apple recently announced their quarterly earnings in January, CEO Tim Cook talked about Apple TV being somewhat of a "hobby" for the company. In a more recent speech given at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference Mr Cook further again reiterated that Apple TV was a mere hobby. However the CEO went on to say "Apple doesn't do hobbies as a general rule" and he felt that Apple needed to do something "special" in order to make its television offerings more serious. If Tim Cook's hints are to be taken as hints, it seems that we are likely to see developments from Apple on the TV front during 2012. As with most Apple releases we usually see much more rumours flying around, which we have:

• Canadians testing Apple TV
• Apple bidding for Sports Rights
• Apple negotiating with television networks (not always successfully)

The question is how soon will we get it? Apple are generally very good at how they market products...even those that people don't know about.....something I am contributing to just by writing this.

Recent news stories have hinted that an event may take place on the 7th March at which it is thought that Apple will announce the iPad 3. It seems unlikely that Apple would announce two big products at one event so I would imagine we won't see a new Apple TV just yet. Other rumours have suggested that we are set see another event take place in February, perhaps this could be the announcement of the Apple TV or has the event already taken place to  release Mountain Lion, the latest OSX?

It seems to be a question of "when" rather than an "if" Apple will enter the mainstream TV market. If Apple can do to the television set what they did to the mobile phone we could see a lot of activity in the television manufacturing industry.

Facebook Floatation. What's not to Like?

Last week it was announced that Facebook was finally floating on the stock market. Much has been written and said about the floatation, in particular the letter written by Mark Zuckerburg to potential investors. Many questions are now arrising as to who would want to invest in the company often valued at $100bn. The question is where does the true value of Facebook lie? 

It's the millions of users of the site that create the value in the product, without the users there is no content or market for advertisers to sell to. We have seen how other social networks have fallen from grace and how the users of these sites (or users leaving the sites) have contributed to this. Friends Reunited is a good example of this. Facebook played a big part in the downfall of this site and to some extent other sites such as Bebo and MySpace. All it takes is the 'next big thing' for people to leave Facebook and effectively damage the value of the company. We may not know what the next big thing is yet but we didn't know what Facebook was before 2004. It will be interesting to see who, what and if people buy into Facebook and whether this will effect Facebook as a product. There will obviously be more pressure for Facebook to be more commercially viable - whether this will affect the experience users have on Facebook remains to be seen.

The fact that Facebook doesn't actually need investment but is floating could actually be self harming.