“Munster was at it again on Thursday, asserting in a research note that Apple ‘will enter the TV market with a full focus, as an all-in-one Apple television could move the needle when connected TVs proliferate,'” Savitz reports.
Savitz reports, “He thinks Apple could sell 1.4 million units, adding $2.5 billion in revenue, growing to $4 billion in calendar 2013, and $6 billion in 2014.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mary J.” for the heads up.]
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Again: before even thinking of entering TV sets market Apple will have to own unique feature that would allow to sell these goods with 40% margin.
Without it Apple will not case since average margins for these markets are twice lower than needed.
Remember that Apple ceased XServe/XSan business because these devices were not selling really well — and that is not because these were worse, but because these were *pricier* than competing products. And pricier because of 40% set margin — Apple understood that there are not enough unique features on these devices for these to be sold with needed margin in good scale — and closed these projects.
Connected TV’s is where the puck is going. And the prices for them would allow Apple to earn decent margins.
Just as Apple overturned the cart with the iPhone imagine the cable company subsidizing your next gen TV. We all know there are piles of money spent on entertainment and if Apple can find a way to transform our experiance in the living room I for one want them to do it.
Apple went from an info appliace company to a info/entertainment powerhouse. The largest market for that segment is TV’s not computers.
Worrying about replacement cycles is nonsense. Who amongst us waits till our Mac is dead to get our next one? We add another and pass along the
last one in some form. Whether to ourselves for a secondary use or to someone else. Improvements drive the buying cycle.
One box, one cable, one iDevice(remote), one bill. A la carte from channels to eBay to QVC and iTunes getting a little revenue all along the way.
Definitely coming ! The apple TV is just for mental conditioning …..
I hope it’s close to my wet dream:
http://www.maclife.com/article/features/future_apple_design_2012_applevision
On Celebrity Eclipse, the in cabin entertainment system was powered by Apple. Had full internet access from a wireless keyboard/remote. Very cool.
Why do you buy an Apple desktop?
Display size and processor power.
You have a Mac Pro, it has an OK processor and sometimes one still adds a display.
You have an iPhone or iPad, not much processor, which will display to an Apple TV.
Now, the processor power of the portable devices will keep going UP. Lots.
It would be nice to be able to consolidate your display devices. Everyone has a TV. Let’s make it a Really Nice One.
Who is it, that when they touch something, they always make it the best that they can? (others just make something to sell)
Yes, Yes, I meant a MacBook Pro.
Here’s the problem with the Apple TV…
It can’t do app overlay with any other video source.
This wouldn’t be an issue if the only video you wanted to ever watch was from Apple TV, but if you’re watching any video from any other source, or playing a console game or whatever, the Apple TV apps will be at a disadvantage to any apps that would be capable of running on a TV itself.
For example, I have a new Vizio TV and Apple TV. The Apple TV is awesome of course in everything that it does, and the sure-to-be-coming apps I’m sure will be awesome too, but the Apple TV can’t do some of the things that the apps on my Vizio TV can do…for example:
Pop up tweets
Pop up emails
Pop up Facebook alerts
Pop up IMDB info
etc…
It’s a different way of semi-active viewing, that requires the app to output directly into the video in order for overlays to take place. Again, this could also work if all video went through the Apple TV first, but then that’s either requiring people to only consume iTunes media, or requiring the Apple TV to have multiple HDMI inputs.
This gives other platforms a huge advantage over Apple, unless Apple either licenses Apple TV to TV manufacturers or develops their own TVs.
“People only buy TVs every 5 years or more”
True, but the TV market is still a very big market and Apple could make a lot of money while extending their ecosystem. Apple knows interface design and how to design beautiful products that people would want in their homes.
Here’s the answer
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8224930/Apple-patent-reveals-plans-for-holographic-display.html
@ Vatdoro
Totally agree – the margins are not big enough and Apple don’t have the distribution to sell in places where people go to buy TVs.
I don’t see this happening. TVs are a commodified market with razor thin margins and flat revenues. Unless Apple is adding something highly value-added, these kinds of margins just wouldn’t be that attractive to them.
Connected TVs have been a bust because consumers are not willing to pay extra just for that feature. They will pay more for higher resolution and bigger screen sizes. As price points on HDTVs have tumbled, the inclusion of new networking features and 3D only serve to prop up existing price points, as the rest of the market moves into commodity pricing.
If Apple wants to shake up the TV market, it will have to be a truly revolutionary TV. The one riddle that nobody has solved yet is how to resolve between the “lean back” activity of TV viewing on a sofa, and the “lean forward” activity of web interaction.
THAT is the main reason why connected TVs and media PCs, etc. have not gone anywhere. It’s all in the UI, and IMO the UI does not belong on a TV screen. The tablet actually offers up the best potential form factor for bridging this gap, and of course, Apple has a formidable one in the iPad.
If Apple can take a TV and essentially make the iPad an extension of the TV itself, not merely a remote control device, then they might be onto something. But, it’s a huge risk given that TVs have plunged into the disposable pricing range, and so much of the functionality of the TV is determined by the external devices plugged into it. Merely integrating things together might not be good enough, given how the content itself is held in so many different hands.
Perhaps the revolution would lie in the ability for the consumer to free himself from the clutches of very expensive cable. I love AppleTV, Hulu, etc and yet they all have limitations or extra steps needed to make them work. Make the experience as easy as turning on a regular TV and surfing the channels you choose to include.
I know nothing about how the cable/TV business works, so I am really just talking off the cuff. But I do know that my cable company gets more and more of my cash every year for a lot of channels I never watch.
@Timbo “Perhaps the revolution would lie in the ability for the consumer to free himself from the clutches of very expensive cable.
…
But I do know that my cable company gets more and more of my cash every year for a lot of channels I never watch.”
That’s precisely why Google TV got kneecapped right out of the gate. Any networked TV platform will have to involve the content providers. The economics of the TV business is moving more and more towards carriage fees, even for OTA broadcasters which increasingly also collect fees from cable/satellite providers.
Figure that ESPN alone collects ~$4/mo from every cable/satellite subscriber. Multiply that out by 12 months and 80+ million subscribers, and that’s nearly $4 billion in revenue from carriage fees alone (not even including what they get from advertising) they’re looking to either protect or replace. Right now, no online video platform can generate anywhere near that kind of revenue.
ESPN already knows this because their online service streams over 1,000 live events annually, but has less than 1% of the total audience. And ESPN already collects carriage fees from ISPs (those ISPs that don’t pay the fees get blocked by ESPN), and I think that will be the next battleground where content providers will go next. Right now, the fees for online TV are low because online TV viewing time is actually very low compared to regular broadcast TV (regular TV viewing time averages over 5 hours per day, while online video viewing time averages less than 10 minutes per day). But, if viewing time picks up significantly, then you can bet that the fees will increase as well.
BTW, ESPN is owned by Disney, and guess who’s the biggest shareholder — Steve Jobs. So, if anyone knows how the TV business works, it’s him.
Google made a major blunder when they presumed that because Hulu and other providers streamed free programs to PC browsers, it would be free for their TV platform as well. Just package an online TV platform together, and populate it somebody else’s programming. Easy, right? Not exactly.
These content providers know that Google’s entire stock and trade is web ads, and the whole point of Google TV is to collect analytics data on viewing habits by aggregating online video content together. Content providers like Hulu are not going to let Google collect something that valuable for free. That’s why they’ve blocked Google TV. If Google wants to redirect web TV streams to their platform, they have to pay up like any cable or satellite provider would.
For Apple to enter the TV market, they would have to play ball with the content providers. They already have existing business relationships with the studios and networks, so it wouldn’t be hard to introduce a TV with a bundle of programming available. I doubt it would be for free, but it might include some distribution that’s different from what we have now.
The whole channel bundling issue IMO is moot. If the cable/satellite business moves towards a la carte channel selections, the costs for each individual channel will go through the roof. Net result would be paying more for fewer channels.
Geezzzzze.??? Why sell a tv. Its a lowest price commodity.
Steve Jobs even stated that it does not make sense to compete in a market where everyone is rushing for the bottom of the barrel.
Rather, sell a $100 add on that allows your computer and music network to talk to the tv. Download your internet stuff to the tv, get netflix on tv,
Its not the TV. Its the connection and how easy it is to make it happen. That is where Apple will come in.
just a thought,
en
Mr. Jobs said at AllThingsD, when asked about Apple TV, that the whole platform for delivery of programming needs to be recreated. It needs to be re-worked as an all in one solution free from ‘yet another set top box’.
He went on to say it’s very complicated and nobody has successfully worked out a new delivery platform.
If Apple were to make a TV, it would run iOS, have facetime and would connect to the Interweb. iPhone/ iPod Touch /iPad would act as the remote control or dual control screen via Airplay. It would be so cool, but you’d still have the same crap to watch on it via the same old sources.
@Pudding “Mr. Jobs said at AllThingsD, when asked about Apple TV, that the whole platform for delivery of programming needs to be recreated. It needs to be re-worked as an all in one solution free from ‘yet another set top box’.
He went on to say it’s very complicated and nobody has successfully worked out a new delivery platform.”
Exactly. Even if Apple comes up with an ingenious interface that resolves all the issues that have hampered adoption of connected TVs thus far, content remains king.
The content providers are willing to try anything if the price is right. Apple’s in a position to make it worth their while to try something innovative with the content delivery. They got cash, and an existing delivery platform in iTunes. But, there are a lot of players with a lot of money at stake. Nobody’s going to let Apple have something for nothing. Just ask Google.
@ElderNorm “Geezzzzze.??? Why sell a tv. Its a lowest price commodity.
Steve Jobs even stated that it does not make sense to compete in a market where everyone is rushing for the bottom of the barrel.
Rather, sell a $100 add on that allows your computer and music network to talk to the tv. Download your internet stuff to the tv, get netflix on tv,”
Yeah, I don’t know where this analyst is coming from. He thinks that because connected TVs are projected to proliferate that Apple will jump right in.
The problem is that those network connection features do nothing more than support existing price points. They don’t lead to revenue growth, they merely attempt to make up for the rapid price declines for HDTVs in general. Revenue in the HDTV market is flat/declining, even with unit sales showing modest increases.
This is not like the MP3 player and smartphone, which were high growth and high margin products when Apple entered those markets.
Even with set-top boxes, I’m not so sure that there’s much of a market there. You already see Netflix and other online content features getting integrated into Blu-ray players. The prices on BD players have also tumbled to the point that it replicates much of the functionality of a $100 set-top box and adds Blu-ray playback on top.
Apple TV (and any other TV device they might make) has a trump card in that it can access iTunes content. If Apple can aggregate additional content together and simplify the pricing, then it might have something.
LOL……..
This tired rumour again. If you want an Apple TV buy an Apple TV. Built in or not, the functionality would be the same.