Apple May Sell TV Sets in 2012, Piper’s Munster Says: Tom Keene

Apple Inc. (AAPL), whose top-selling product is the iPhone, may sell television sets in 2012, according to Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray Cos.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs has had limited success selling Apple TV, a set-top box introduced in 2007 that attaches to an existing TV set and enables consumers to rent movies. As recently as September, Jobs called the product a hobby.

“What Apple does really well is put everything into one box,” Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, said in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt. “People are much more willing to pay $1,200 for something Apple puts together that’s all nice and neat than go try and tie it all together themselves.”

The Cupertino, California, company has many patents related to TV technology and believes a 25- by 50-inch TV would be well received, according to Munster. Patents signaled the coming of the iPad tablet PC, he said.

Apple increased 1 percent to $335.33 at 12:27 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have risen 3.9 percent this year.

The iPhone 5 will likely be released in September, the new iPod portable media player will be released in time for the back-to-school season, and a new MacBook Air laptop will be available in the next few weeks, according to Munster.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Ragazzo in New York at jragazzo@bloomberg.net; Tom Keene in New York at tkeene@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. Photographer: Monica M. Davey/EPA