Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Monday:
Widescreen Value: While Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is still riding high on the popularity of its mobile devices, signs are pointing to its next big product being for the living room. Apple will reportedly kick-start its flagging Apple TV business with a high-definition television. UBS analyst Maynard Um told Apple Insider that the “logic is sound” for the company to enter the market. Based on comparisons to other television manufacturers like Sony (NYSE:SNE), Apple could raise its market cap by as much as $100 billion with a strong HDTV business. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has been predicting that Apple will enter the HDTV market this year since last November.
There’s strong evidence that an Apple-made television is on its way. The company signed a multiyear deal with Rovi (NASDAQ:ROVI) last November that could guarantee live TV and DVR service on a connected Apple television. Apple has also invested billions in LCD-screen manufacturing over the past 12 months, and it would not be unreasonable to expect the company to use its LCD production capabilities on more than just iPads.
HTC Blocker: HTC is fast-becoming a leader in the Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android smartphone market in the U.S., thanks to the popularity of the Thunderbolt, a device compatible with Verizon’s (NYSE:VZ) 4G network. No wonder then that Apple has set its litigating sights on the company. According to a report at Bloomberg (via Boy Genius Report), Apple filed a suit against HTC with the International Trade Commission claiming that HTC has infringed on several Apple patents. The two companies actually traded a series of patent lawsuits against one another
in early 2010.
Even More iPads: International Data’s Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker declared that nearly 54 million tablets will be sold by the end of the year. The group previously estimated that around 50 million tablets would be sold across the year. The raised estimates come from the runaway success of Apple’s second-generation iPad, which was released in March. That said, IDC said that Apple’s shipments of the tablet were much lower than expected, implying that supply problems are keeping the company from selling as many iPads as it could.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
