Amaya Toman The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved Apple's application earlier this month to trademark "iPod touch," expanding the definition to include "a hand-held unit for playing electronic games; handheld game console.” Just the newly specified definition may indicate that the next generation of the player will serve more like a handheld game console.
Since 2008, Apple has trademarked the name iPod touch under an international license with the following description:
Portable and hand-held digital electronic devices for recording, organizing, transferring, manipulating and viewing text, data, audio and video files on portable and hand-held digital electronic devices.
As part of approving the new specification for its trademark, Apple provided the relevant authority with a screenshot of its website. It depicts an iPod touch, further down the page you can see that it is a "Gaming" section. The red arrows in the screenshot point to the inscriptions "iPod touch" and "Buy".
At first glance, this is not a groundbreaking innovation – it has been possible to play games on the iPod touch from the very beginning. On the other hand, Apple must have some reason why it wants to officially introduce its player into the field of game consoles. It may be a purely protective step in relation to the competition, but it is also possible that the company is really working on the seventh generation iPod touch.
Apple's request will be presented to the opposition on February 19 this year. If there are no third-party objections, it will be approved within a year.
Source: MacRumors
The image is not a screenshot of the iPod touch screen, but a screenshot from the computer's Safari web browser. ? Perhaps someone with at least some knowledge and experience could translate these articles. ?