Apple is in the early stages of building a new Apple TV device with a built-in camera and speaker, according to Bloomberg.
The latest Apple TV was launched in 2016 and has long started for an upgrade, as it competes with TV products from Amazon, Google and Roku, which have gained market share by routinely adding new features.
A camera could activate services such as FaceTime calls, which are already available on Macs, iPhones and iPads, and allow people to talk video through their TVs. This would bring some features just like the Amazon Fire TV Cube, which supports webcams for video chats but doesn’t have its own camera, or the Facebook TV Portal, which has a built-in camera. The speaker might help it to double as a HomePod to play music and talk to Siri.
Bloomberg has warned that Apple may decide to abandon the project.
Meanwhile, Apple is expected to announce a new Apple TV with an improved remote control and a faster processor at some point in 2021, Bloomberg said in September.
Read more on Bloomberg.