“Reading between the lines of the Wall Street Journal‘s story Monday about Apple’s ‘assault’ on the TV business, you can almost hear the desperation of the media executives who asked Apple (AAPL) to brief them on exactly what the wizards of Cupertino are up to,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“These media executive — which included, presumably, Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. (NWS) owns the Journal — are reported to be worried about what’s going to happen to the $150 billion a year that the existing TV business generates in the U.S. alone from advertising and monthly cable TV subscriptions,” P.E.D. reports. “They should be worried. That pipeline of cash — extracted from viewers through monopoly cable pricing and intrusive ads that nobody wants to watch — is ripe for disruption by the same technology that hollowed out the music business a decade earlier.”
P.E.D. reports, “Which brings us, as it often does, to Horace Dediu’s analysis of the situation. In a post published a week ago entitled ‘Hiding in plain sight,’ he pointed out that nearly all of Apple’s most disruptive products have been sustaining improvements on existing products, technologies or platforms… This, and the fact (as Steve Jobs himself reminded his 100 top staffers last year) that making TV sets is a low-margin, slow-turnover business, leads Dediu to conclude that the Apple TV that everybody is speculating about is the Apple TV the company is already selling.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple meets with media executives to discuss TV plans, say sources – December 19, 2011
With Siri TV, Apple will dismantle the TV networks – December 16, 2011
Strategy Analytics: With 32% share, Apple leading ‘Connected TV’ market with ‘hobby’ Apple TV – December 12, 2011
Apple will reinvent television – December 2, 2011
