What Industry Will Apple Try to Dominate Next? Video.

When it comes to electronic entertainment you pretty much have the four big industries: music, movies, television, and video games. Apple was very successful with iTunes and the iPod making them a dominate player in the music business. iTunes has expanded to movies and television to some degree but for the most part they are not calling the shots in that industry yet. In video games, iPhone has become a surprisingly successful player selling or giving away several thousand titles from their App Store and as Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts says the iPhone and iTouch is “freaking out Sony and Nintendo” the 800lbs gorillas in the gaming industry.

Almost overnight Apple became a dominate player in the music business. The next night they completely changed the mobile phone business. The following night they became a major player in the video gaming industry. The question is: What’s next?

You’ve probably read about the 10” screens that Apple has ordered and the huge order for more memory from the same company that supplies them with iPhone and iTouch memory. Some have speculated that memory is for a 32 gig iPhone, but I think it’s intended for the same device as the 10” screen.

It’s my theory – and that’s all it is – that the 10” screen will be a new video platform. Where the iPod came to dominate music players and the iPhone has become a seemingly unstoppable force in the mobile phone industry, the 10” mystery device will be Apple’s foray into a portable video game and video movie players.

Think of how much fun playing video games would be on a 10” touch screen and how powerful the the App Store is for delivering a diverse and unlimited number of games from the unclean masses. The video gaming industry, thanks to iPhone and iTouch, is becoming an open playing field no longer limited to the select companies that can afford to spend hundreds of thousands, nay, millions developing games. For an entry fee of $75.00 (the cost of a iPhone developer license) anyone can develop a new game and submit it to the App Store. And according to statistics released by Apple recently, most of the new games are approved and distributed.

But the 10” mystery device is not just for gaming. No. It’s also for downloadable movies and television. I’ve watched quite a few shows on my iPhone: the experience is convenient because I can take my iPhone anywhere, but it would sure be a lot better on a 10” screen. Why haven’t we been able to download movies and TV shows directly to our iPhones and iPods? What’s the hold up? Sure you can download them to iTunes and then transfer them to your handhelds, but what’s the fun of that? I want to download movies and TV shows directly to my 10” portable mystery device. The 10” mystery device will allow you to download your favorite movies and TV shows directly, rather than having to use your home or laptop computer as an intermediary.

I’m pretty sure Apple is not making a “netbook”, in fact, Apple would never do something like that because netbooks are - in my opinion – a joke. Netbooks are too big to stick in your pocket and too small for productivity applications (have you ever tried to write a document on a 12" screen? It sucks) . No. It’s not a netbook it’s a multitouch tablet. And I tell you another thing: the 10” tablet is not intended for productivity applications any more than the iPhone was meant for word processing. The 10” tablet is going to be for playing multitouch videos games and watching movies and, of course, for surfing the World Wide Web. But they won’t call it a tablet any more than they will call their notebook computers (i.e. MacBooks) notebooks or their smartphone (i.e. iPhone) a smartphone or their music player (i.e. iPod) a “MP3 Player”. No, Apple will call it the iVideo, iTouch or iSlate or something else, but a multitouch tablet computer it will be. The new device will support web browsing as well – why do you think the Safari web browser supports multitouch? Multitouch support in the Safari web browser is not just for the iPhone or desktop computers with touch screens to come, it's for this new 10” multitouch tablet.

But the real money is in video and that’s where Apple will cash in just as they’ve done with iTunes and the App Store. Oh, yeah and if you are a Hulu.com fan like I am then your bound to be disappointed because the 10” tablet is not going to support Flash or Silverlight. No, it will support QuickTime and perhaps a new proprietary video player specifically designed for Apple’s new on-line movie service. Watch out Sony, Miramax, Hollywood, and Touchstone Pictures: Here comes Apple.

Update 20 min later

Really weird but I just read a blog post by John Lianoglou at Uncarved which says some of the same things I did in the above post, misses some points (like the whole Video game and movie focus), and identifies some things I think are spot on (i.e. the vertical port for normal desktop usage). It's a great read. I especially like the part where he says, "We all know that whatever Apple does ultimately announce will end up making the product I’ve described utterly pedestrian; that’s just what they do." I feel the same way about my predictions, John.