The time may soon come when TV service providers are also going to compete for the rights to exclusive distribution to the Apple Tablet…

There are long running rumors that Apple will soon launch a new device that will look like the iPhone but with a much bigger screen and with great capacity: the so called Apple Tablet. Whether Apple launches such a device or not, there appears to be a market opportunity for a mid sized touch screen, media focused device.  It seems that there are also lively debates around where consumers would actually fit such a new device into their daily life.

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Well, it seems to me that an Apple Tablet-like device could constitute a very nice device for “portable TV” consumption.

Of course, one could argue that this tablet is also the perfect fit for e-book or e-news reading, as the rumor that popular brands of newspapers, magazines and book edition have been recently approached by Apple suggests.

But I can’t help myself thinking that it could be in Apple’s interest to develop partnerships with TV service providers in order to kick-off the Apple Tablet market. On their side TV service providers, and especially non-telco TV service providers, would be offered a nice alternative to DVB-H or 2.5G or 3G Mobile TV, as they could be in full control of it.  By positioning Apple Tablet as the perfect device for a completely renewed and personalized portable TV and video experience, Apple and TV service providers would for sure give pay-TV subscribers a good reason to buy the afore named tablet.

The partnership would have to be a little bit different from what it has been with mobile phone operators, as, for such partnership to produce results, a specific portable TV offering would have to be developed and associated with the Apple Tablet. The key attributes of this portable TV proposition, that would complement the fixed TV proposition of TV service providers, would consist in the device convenience and design, as well as  “editorialized video podcasting”, that would enable viewers to watch TV content while "on the move" and that would also deliver content based on the users' profiles.

We laid out in more details why and how this kind of new portable TV offerings could appeal to consumers in a report which was published in April this year and which title is: "Portable TV, Not Mobile TV: Service Providers Should Brand And Sell Their Own Portable TV Devices." Clients can access it here.