“While I’m not against the iWatch — because it is likely to account for some revenue — it won’t be the game-changer that investors want,” Bret Kenwell writes for TheStreet. “It’s really hard to introduce blockbuster product after blockbuster product. And growing revenues at a high rate for a company Apple’s size isn’t exactly a piece of cake either. Apple shares opened today at $530 even, down 5% year to date but up 17.8% over the past year.”
“My biggest concern has to do with product turnover and the replacement cycle. Unlike smartphones, there’s no need to upgrade to a new TV every couple of years. Once a consumer buys a TV, the product generally lasts a long time,” Kenwell writes. “As Apple is known for its superior, high quality products, why would I need to replace an Apple TV five or 10 years after I buy one?”
“Second, as television prices continue to sink, how will Apple be able to maintain its typical expensive prices? I don’t know that Apple could. It would result in a direct hit to margins if the price of the company’s TV set declined,” Kenwell writes. “Still, the living room has a lot of potential… Apple needs more than a TV set. Incorporating Siri, along with the iPhone and iPad as a remote would be nice. But there needs to be a way to turn the TV into something more. And I don’t mean connecting to Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime video either. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Apple’s iWatch does not currently exist, it would be difficult to be “against it,” much less divine how much revenue it might generate.
TV won’t be like your father’s TV. My sense is, it will be much more capable than the current version.
Oh, and the price will definitely increase under the new form factor.
There won’t be a television set!
Do you suffer from multiple personality disorder by any chance.
Yes. But we don’t think it’s a disorder.
Big ticket TV items will be slower sales compared to iPads and iPhones. Besides the Japanese are already shooting for 8K broadcasts by 2016. When does the resolution madness end? The death of the local Bijou is at hand.
I see a day when the price of televisions will be gutted by removing the television’s tuner.
Televisions will become simple monitors and the HD tuner will be sold separately, allowing consumers to upgrade to larger and faster monitors cheaply after their initial purchase of the tuner.
Wall mounted monitors could become permanent and we’d just take the tuner with us when we moved.
Tuners would be cheaper because they aren’t saddled with the rest of the television, and vice versa.
This is where an Apple TV with tuner makes sense. Coupled with Apple’s software, the design would be challenge for any competitor to overcome. But first Apple would have to convince us Apple Television would be a superior experience.
Quite possible.
Apple will wait after releasing the next iPhone, that is gonna be huge, not only for the physical size but the impact in sales . It is not good to steal the attention away from it .
Why doesn’t Apple just rename ‘Game Center’ to ‘Game Changer’? The Wall Street guys will get what they say they want and they won’t know the difference.
This guy “needs” to shut up. 😎
Today, I bury Schrodinger’s cat. Tomorrow, I will feed Schrodinger’s cat. On day three, I’ll bury the cat …day four, I feed the cat. Is this what it means to be an analyst? One day you’re killing the rumored iWatch, tomorrow you burn it.
Maybe, when I get up in the morning, I should put on my street-walking make-up, kill Apple-TV with my keyboard and whore for hits. Tomorrow, I’ll kill the iWatch. Day three, I’ll laud the iWatch. After awhile, this kind of speculative reporting is really nothing more than walking the streets with a lot of makeup and some leopard print leotards two sizes small. It’s like quantum mechanics except it’s the analyst in a box …dead or alive …flip a coin ..who cares.
“It’s really hard to introduce blockbuster product after blockbuster product.”
Exactly! This is what is scary about Apple. Can they even deliver another blockbuster product? Or will they keep using the current products to take everybody on their current course that seems to downgrade functionality with each release and funnel everybody through their iCloud and iTunes pay-as-you-go cash cows? This would follow Microsoft down the road to mediocrity.
The MacBook Pro updates came late, the Mac Pro update took forever and Apple still hasn’t delivered on the very simple undertaking of a bigger screen on the iPhone. You have to wonder if Apple is up to the task.
Tim Cook better pull a rabbit out of the hat if he is to redeem himself.
I don’t see Apple ever getting into the TV hardware market. It’s a low margin cutthroat business; the kind they don’t operate in, like netbooks and low end PCs. What great differentiator would there be to lure buyers to a more expensive model? People want a variety of content interfaces.
Computers and phones are, in general, low-margin cutthroat businesses. Apple made those work.
They made it work by charging a premium for iPhone.
Ballmer was dumbfounded as to how his company could support such an expensive device if no one would buy it, then as if to even everyone’s conviction, he proclaimed it didn’t even have a keyboard.
Man! Was he completely out of touch.
I see no reason why Apple WOULDN’T sell the TV set. Apple has always been in favor of simplification … so why not insert the Apple TV into the TV set itself and then there are less wires, less mess, more elegance. That’s what Apple is all about!
As if Apple could compete with Samsung in the television space.
They are already too dependent on Samsung for iDevice chips & displays.
Apple changed the world of mobile communication because people were already navigating towards desktop independence.
Apple could include a television tuner and radio in Apple TV and let Samsung provide the monitor.
In other words, Apple could up end the television industry if they provided a tuner designed in conjunction with the A8 that works with ANY monitor.
Look at what’s going on. Televisions are simply getting larger and not necessarily better. However, Google is attempting to change TV viewing using software, much of it is Internet-centric and hardly innovative.
Where Apple could differentiate their products in the TV industry is to provide a computer driven tuner in the next Apple TV.
Playing off that might be to launch Apple satellites in the next decade.
There may be a full on Apple TV on the cards, however if I were running Apple I would release a new version of the current Apple TV on steroids which is 4K capable. It would be able to run apps and games and would have yet more integration with the rest of iCloud and iOS. I would at the same time release a range of new 4K Apple Cinema Displays in 3 or 4 sizes. Apple could kill two birds with one stone by releasing cinemas displays for Apple TV or for the new Mac Pro users. The Apple TV would also be compatible with regular HD and 4K 3rd party displays.
If I only had a nickel for every pundit that proclaimed Apple’s next product wasn’t going to amount to much….
The next big innovation will be the iSpeculatronatator. It’s a device that will send out lethal rays that will destroy speculators and moronic jouranalist (redundancy provided free of charge) who ask questions instead of reporting news.