Peter Kafka from All Things Digital writes today that Apples is thinking about launching a $30 per month iTunes-based subscription service to carry cable and broadcast television programming early next year.

According to unnamed sources, over the past few weeks Apple has been pitching the idea to several of the major broadcast and cable networks.  As the article correctly points out, it’s a tough sell: cable networks will are not going to do anything to jeopardize the lucrative business model currently in place, in which they receive both a large cut of the advertising revenue as well as subscription fees from the cable carrier - and everyone is probably tremendously cautious about the effect on ad load, given the inability so far to monetize internet video through advertising (even industry leader hulu has had trouble selling its inventory).

However, there’s something we think the ‘All Things Digital’ article misses…  something important…

According to the article, “Apple (AAPL) isn’t tying the proposed service to a specific piece of hardware”.

We think this is probably just plain wrong.

Apple developed iTunes and gave it away for free - to drive sales of  their mobile devices.  After buying the German music production software company Emagic in 2002, Apple promptly discontinued Windows support and cut the price of the remaining Apple-only versions of Emagic’s Logic music software in precisely half  - to drive sales of their higher-end desktop and laptop machines.

Here’s the thing: Apple is a hardware company - one that happens to also release software for free (iTunes) or as a loss leader (Logic) for the purpose of adding value to their relatively high margin hardware products.  It’s a business model that’s worked pretty well for them,  and it’s not one that Apple is likely to completely abandon any time soon.  It’s also a business model that depends upon a closed loop between compelling proprietary software and Apple hardware.  For that reason, we believe Apple will be going into the television hardware business in 2010.   It could be the long-awaited Apple tablet netbook - or imagine this: a sleek full-size Apple flat screen television with iTunes/Apple TV baked in…

When you think about it, all the pieces are already in place - the Apple brand has never been stronger, the one mature for-pay online media service with a proven track record among content owners is the iTunes Store, and the Apple certainly knows how to build lovely monitor hardware.

Although in the past Steve Jobs has managed Apple TV expectations by dismissing it as a ‘hobby‘, word of these talks are the clearest indication yet of Apple’s next major move.   From the perspective of the MSO, though, such a scenario represents nothing less than the perfect storm: existing cable packages would lose value due to a superior competing product - but a competing product that also happens to be sending the bandwidth usage costs on their (to date) all-you-can-eat internet access packages through the roof.  They’re not going to lie down and let something like that play out without a fight (hence preemptive initiatives such as TV Everywhere).

Look for Apple (or any other company that finally gets this whole convergence thing right) to cause a major struggle between the Comcasts and the Comedy Centrals of the world…