Speculation that TiVo might be Apple’s next acquisition target, or at least should be:
[I]t’s time for Apple to step in. Steve Jobs is the only man in techland who can stand up to the content companies on his own terms. Not only does he understand the entertainment industry — his other company, Pixar, is a Hollywood hit machine — but he also deeply understands the consumer.
TiVo should find a soft spot in Jobs’s heart for other reasons. In January, TiVo announced that upcoming devices would use Apple’s Rendezvous networking technology to allow TiVo-equipped TVs to play music and display photos stored on a Mac. Also, TiVo is similar to Jobs’s erstwhile NeXT Software — an expensive and risky endeavor, but eerily prescient. When Jobs returned to Apple, he brought NeXT with him, and its core technologies are burrowed deep into OS X, the elegant operating system at the center of Apple’s new “iLife” media strategy. Jobs could do the same with TiVo. With a depressed market cap and nearly 625,000 customers, TiVo is a steal. Jobs would have to unwind some messy licensing agreements, but he’s done that before. His next step would be to apply Apple’s design elegance and create an “iTV” device that integrates with Macintosh OS X, the Internet, and your cable or satellite box.
