“In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Television was big business by the start of the 1960′s,” Menta writes. “Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple CEO Steve Jobs just said during his WWDC 2010 keynote address that Apple would pass the 100 million device mark this month.
Menta continues, “That makes a proprietary amalgam greater than what the TV networks had in 1959 and one that easily serves as a foundation for a pending broadcast network that will be delivered not through tall radio towers, but through small wireless hubs and the Internet. Call it the Apple Broadcast Network. iAd is how Apple plans to pay for it.”
“Last April, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall mused that Apple could generate through a hybrid pricing model as much as $32 per 1,000 viewers. That’s pure speculation, but if Apple comes anywhere close to Marshall’s figure then it becomes just a matter of how large a cut Apple offers Zucker and his ilk to free up network programming,” Menta writes. “If that happens the Apple Broadcast Network becomes a reality. ‘If’ is the key word here.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dow C." for the heads up.]
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