Apple TV Set Release Date Predicted; Google Faces Fine for Safari Violation

Every week, makes news with technology developments, business deals and, more often than not, controversies.

That’s where our weekly "Core Bytes" column on Apple comes in. We’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our favorite backyard tech giant.

Controversies

Google could be slapped with a fine as big as $10 million for planting cookies in Safari, and bypassing Apple software security settings. In doing so, the Federal Trade Commission alledges, they were able to see targeted advertising of Safari users on their computers, iPhones, laptops and iPads.

New Products

Eager for an Apple TV set? You may have to wait longer than originally anticipated, said a prominent J.P. Morgan analyst, who speculated that the set wouldn’t be available until 2014 due to rough conditions in the TV market. Yet he was more optimistic about an online payment system he dubbed ‘iPay’, which would easily allow iPhone and iPad users to pay for goods and services.

Business Deals and Developments

Apple’s iOS platform is expected to drop from a 72.1 percent market share to just slightly above 50 percent by 2017. It will heed way to Google’s Android operating system, which is predicted to rise from 22.5 percent now to 40.5 percent in five years. The NPD Display Search report also projected that tablet sales would spike from 81.6 million units sold last year to 424 million by 2017.

China has now topped the U.S. as the largest smartphone market, thanks to the iPhone 4S launch. In the first quarter of 2012, China represented 22 percent of the global smartphone market, while the U.S. was 16 percent. Of the top ten countries where iPhones are sold, half are in the Asia-Pacific region.

Apple junkies with a Walmart or Target in their cities are in luck: the company will be expanding its store-within-a-store presence there. It is currently testing the idea at two locations and hopes to expand to 26 stores by the year’s end.

‘Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview” will be hitting 11 Landmark Theaters in 19 cities on May 11. The rare footage is from a 1995 interview with journalist Robert Cringely for his 1995 PBS miniseries “Revenge of the Nerds.” The interview became known for Jobs’ quip that Microsoft makes “really third-rate products.”