Foxconn ‘making preparations’ for Apple iTV production, says chairman

The Apple “iTV” rumors just keep on comin’. This time, however, the source of the report is none other than Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, who told major Chinese English-language newspaper China Daily that his company will soon begin production of the long-speculated Apple HDTV.

China Daily reporter Gou Changxin writes that Gou indicated that Foxconn is “making preparations” for the iTV, but that “development or manufacturing ” has not yet started. Gou also reportedly said that Foxconn’s recent 46.5 percent share purchase of Sharp’s massive, high-tech LCD plant in Sakai, Japan, is part of those preparations.

Early this week, an unnamed source told CultofMac that he or she had seen Apple’s prototype HDTV, and further backed up rumors that the television would come loaded with the Siri voice-controlled virtual assistant that is currently found exclusively in the iPhone 4S. The source also said that the TV has FaceTime video chat, and will look similar to Apple’s Cinema Display monitors.

The China Daily report reiterates all of these rumors.

The Apple iTV rumor mill went into full production last year after the release of Walter Isaacson’s biography of late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. In the book, Jobs is quoted as saying that he had “finally cracked” the problem of how to make a better television. According to The New York Times and other publications, the solution he found was Siri.

Still, it’s hard to know exactly what Apple has in store — it wouldn’t be Apple, after all, if such guesses were easy. But with even the chairman of Foxconn, Apple’s primary manufacturer, saying that an Apple television is real, the release of such a device appears all but imminent.

(Via HowToArena/AppleInsider)

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