Uni-Media Press

With Wednesday’s announcement that it will be revamping its web TV offerings, Apple has made its most serious push into an emerging, and increasingly crowded, field.

Google and TiVo, as well as lesser-known rivals like Boxee and Roku, are among the most visible players that offer — or plan to offer — set-top boxes or services that stream online content onto the user’s television screen.

Whether Apple can jump to the front of this field with its new Apple TV box remains an open question that may not be settled for months, analysts say.

“It’s a step forward for sure, but I don’t think they did enough to separate themselves from the pack,” said Michael Inouye, an industry analyst with ABI Research.

“No one’s been the real outright success in it yet. There’s nothing you can put your hat on, saying, ‘These guys dominate the space’ yet.”

Web-TV integration systems let users stream content from the internet, like YouTube videos or Pandora music, to their televisions. Most systems also allow buying or renting network TV shows and streaming from movie sites like Netflix.

As Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted in his presentation Wednesday, these products — including the original Apple TV device, launched in 2007 — haven’t caught on with mainstream audiences yet.

But it’s easy to see why tech companies are making the move. The web seems nearly ubiquitous, but its user base still pales when compared with the estimated 4 billion television viewers worldwide.

Inouye said standalone set-top boxes have also struggled early on because other devices like Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation and Blu-ray players offer some similar abilities.

As competitors responded to Apple’s announcement, “confident” was the word that kept coming up.

“Roku is completely confident that our strategy of offering more features and lower cost than competitors continues to be the right plan,” the company said in a written statement.

The same day as Apple’s announcement, Roku — a web TV pioneer when it debuted in 2008 — cut the price of its standard-definition box to $59 and its HD-enabled box to $69.

At Boxee, where a new set-top box is expected in November, executives were emphasizing their device’s ease of use.

“We all watched the Apple announcement,” Boxee CEO Avner Ronen wrote in a blog post late Wednesday. “We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete.

“We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms. We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want.”

Apple TV streams content mainly from the iTunes online store, while devices such as Boxee, Roku and TiVo Premiere can access material from other web sources, such as YouTube.

Many people who bought the first generation of Apple TV used Boxee software to bring in third-party content. Now, the Boxee Box will go head-to-head with Apple, a new position for a group that Ronen describes as mostly “Apple fanboys.”

Google similarly defended its place in the market, while also taking a swipe at Apple’s relatively closed platform.

“It’s increasingly clear that the future of the web and the future of the living room are intertwined, as we see many players introduce new connected devices,” said a statement from a Google spokesperson Thursday.

“However, we believe the future of TV is one where users can transform their traditional TV watching experience by seamlessly integrating the full potential of the open web — as opposed to the partial, closed web. We look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks.”

Inouye said that, in the long run, tech giants Google and Apple may have an advantage because they can couple their web TV offerings with other products.

“I think the difference they bring is the existing platforms already out there,” he said. “Bring some of that to these devices, and it would be a huge boost to what you could do.”

When it announced Google TV in May, Google said that apps written on its Android operating system for smartphones will also work on TV, and that the system will be open to outside developers who wish to create new apps specifically for televisions.

Apple TV allows integration with devices like the iPhone and iPad, letting users transfer video content from one of those devices to their television.

The system doesn’t work with its smartphone operating system, meaning iPhone and iPad apps don’t necessarily work on TV, but that could change.

“We’re not there yet, but that seems to be the natural evolution of these devices and services,” Inouye said. “Taking that to the big screen would definitely seem compelling.”

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Cisco’s rumored bid for Skype would make a great deal of strategic sense for the networking giant, but the pairing faces one major obstacle that might prevent the deal from getting done.

Buying a phone service would put Cisco into competition with its largest customer base: telecommunications companies.

“If they were to own that, they’d scare all of the phone carriers in the world,” said Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner. “Skype is in the business of selling cut-rate phone service, and Cisco sells all of its equipment to carriers. That would seem like a bad idea.”

Dulaney said he thought the deal was unlikely to happen because of the conflict of interest Cisco would face.

It’s also not the kind of deal that Cisco typically does. Skype’s sales topped $700 million last year, and the company would likely sell for several billion dollars. The vast majority of Cisco’s acquisitions are for much smaller companies. However, when there’s a technology that it really likes, Cisco has been known to make rare exceptions. Last year, it even did it twice, paying $3 billion each for videoconferencing systems maker Tandberg and networking products company Starent Networks.

Other analysts think that the deal is too good for Cisco to pass up.

Skype would seem like a natural fit. Cisco chief John Chambers and his team are making a big push into video and voice-over-IP collaboration tools, and that’s exactly what Skype offers.

TechCrunch reported Sunday that Cisco had made a bid for Skype, citing a source it deemed reliable. The Internet phone company filed last month for a $100 million public offering, but Cisco certainly has the cash to make a better deal. Neither company would comment on the rumors.

Skype would bring to Cisco a customer base of more than 550 million worldwide users. It’s a consumer product, which would play well with Cisco’s attempts to move beyond its networking roots and become a more broad-based, consumer-friendly IT company.

Many Americans already have a Cisco product or two in their home — even if they don’t know it. Last year, Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500) bought Flip video player maker Pure Digital. The company already makes the popular Linksys-branded Wi-Fi routers for consumers and small businesses, and in March, it unveiled a consumer-friendly wireless router line called Valet.

Skype is attractive bait: Cisco CEO John Chambers has called the collaboration market a $34 billion opportunity, and acquiring Skype would position Cisco even better to cash in on that market.

“The only sticking point to this deal is that Cisco would go into competition with its customers,” said Brian White, analyst at Ticonderoga Securities. “Cisco is one of the savviest tech companies out there, so they must be able to find a way where it wouldn’t be so threatening.”

Suppressing the threat may not be as big of a deal as it seems, as telecoms are beginning to play nicely with Internet phone services. Verizon allows its customers to use Skype on their smartphones, and a Google Voice app is available on a growing number of smartphones (though, notably, not the iPhone).

Cisco is already involved to some degree in “coopetition” with its customers. The company’s WebEx online conferencing software uses voice-over-IP technology that bypasses the need to use a telephone for virtual meetings.

“There’s a good chance the deal will get done,” said Erik Suppiger, a senior research analyst at Signal Hill Capital. “Skype certainly feeds into Cisco’s vision, so the deal makes a good deal of sense.”

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