Online reports claim that Apple is soon to introduce the next version of Apple TV, a platform designed to bring online video streaming to your TV. This news comes just a week after Google TV was officially announced.

May 31, 2010 — We reported recently that Google TV will launch in the US this autumn. The service will give users Google-style search capabilities for locally and remotely stored media, and Google obviously hopes that they’ll be the ones to crack this tricky puzzle: How do you combine the internet with living-room TV viewing?

No sooner had that news settled in, however, than Apple scraped out a fresh line in the dirt: News has now emerged on the technology blog Engadget that a new generation of Apple TV will soon arrive. Apple, which recently overtook Microsoft to become the world’s largest consumer-electronics manufacturer, is clearly going for total world domination.

But observers criticised the iPad for not living up to its hype and Apple will again have to work hard to prove that Apple TV — not Google TV — has finally hit the nail on the head.

Still, where one major criticism of the iPad was its excessive pricing, Apple TV is sure to come up trumps: According to the report on Engadget, the device will cost just 99 USD (70 GBP).