“In all the markets in which Apple Inc. has had success, the consumer electronics company has been a pioneer,” Douglas A. McIntyre writes for 24/7 Wall St. “If it moves into the television industry, it will lack that critical advantage, which may be a barrier it cannot overcome.”
MacDailyNews Take: Without having seen it, how can anyone know whether it is pioneering or not? With history as our guide, one thing we will state unequivocally is that, if Apple does launch a product into a new market, they will believe it is a pioneering product that will shift the paradigm. See: Mac, iPod, iTunes, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, iPad, etc.
“A look at the history of Apple product launches makes the point that, even if Apple manufactures and markets the best products in a sector, it additionally has the ‘first mover’ advantage, to use an overused Harvard Business School term,” McIntyre writes. “The Mac was first sold in 1984 under the name Macintosh. That put its computer in the market at the beginning of the PC age.”
MacDailyNews Take: Nice try, but no. Apple’s Mac was not a first mover. Apple themselves already had a raging success, Apple II, on the market at the time. Steve Jobs’ and team’s Macintosh shifted the paradigm, it was not a “first mover.”
McIntyre writes, “The iPod, which was first released in 2001, was an early version of portable multimedia players.
MacDailyNews Take: Early version, yes, but iPod was not first. Apple entered a market that needed to be revolutionized. iPod shifted the paradigm, it was not a “first mover.”
McIntyre writes, “The iPhone, released in 2007, was among the first smartphones aimed at the consumer market.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again, McIntyre stretches too far to rewrite history in order to support his conceit. iPhone was not the first “smartphone” (it was, of course, the first “brilliantphone”) nor was it the first “smartphone” aimed at consumers. iPhone shifted the paradigm, it was not a “first mover.”
McIntyre writes, “And the iPad was one of the first tablet PCs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Sheesh. The first “tablet PC” was described by Alan Kay (Dynabook) in 1972. Apple themselves debuted the Newton MessagePad in 1993. Microsoft has been trying (and failing) to sell Tablet PCs to suckers since 2001. Apple’s Steve Jobs debuted iPad on January 27, 2010. iPad — as with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone before it — shifted the paradigm, it was not a “first mover.”
McIntyre writes, “The television obviously has been at the center of the living room for decades… Apple’s powerful brand may help the firm to elbow its way into the living room. However, Americans already have televisions with massive screens, sophisticated audio and boxes for satellites, cable TV and even the current version of Apple TV piled high next to those screens to allow for access to a nearly infinite body of programs. Apple will be late to the TV market. That creates a barrier the company is not used to and a situation in which it has to gain on the competition from behind.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: People already had or had access to computers, portable music players, smartphones, and tablet PCs. It took Apple to revolutionize each and make consumers aspire to own them. McIntyre’s entire argument fails the test of logic and reality. Apple isn’t the first mover. In the markets in which it chooses to play, Apple is often the first one to get it right and quickly the one all others then attempt to copy.
Apple employees look at existing markets, services, and products and ask themselves, “How can we improve this, so that we would want to buy and use it?” Television is actually the perfect candidate for an Apple revolution. Stodgy and not very intuitive, the TV set calls out to Apple for help.
McIntyre’s claim that Apple will “be late to the TV market” is ridiculous, especially when he refutes it all by himself in the sentence before by mentioning “the current version of Apple TV.” If they’re already in the market, then they can’t be late, Dougie (pat on the head, run along now, boy; go have a lollipop, the adults are talking now).
The “barrier” that McIntyre tries and fails to construct is actually the condition that Apple actively seeks out and with which the Cupertino Colossus is intimately familiar. Their whole business is built upon it; it’s a foundation, not a barrier. We can almost hear Tim Cook thinking, “Hmm, mediocre products. Not very user-friendly. People don’t really know what they want or how to buy – another perfect market for us to transform!”
The Apple freight train has routinely driven through McIntyre’s ill-conceived “barrier” as if it didn’t exist, because it doesn’t.
One thing the new ultra-thin HDTVs need to better address is connectivity. They are so thin it’s hard to find space for a power supply or the audio/video input-outputs. Seems an external brick with the power supply and inputs may be a necessary evil with these units as well as external sound bars.
For Apple to sell a TV, it will have to be very different. I’ll predict here what it could be. It will be a 1″ thick panel that only mounts on a wall, the mount sets it 2 inches from the wall. It will only be a video panel with minimal electronics. The speakers are on the back and sound washes the wall and bounces to viewers. The bezel is minimal aluminum as thin as an art gallery picture frame. Power is wireless from a pad on the wall in back of the TV. Power goes to the pad via a flat unobtrusive cable. All video and audio signal input is wireless. Any Apple device can act as controller or “tuner”. Macs, pads, pods and phones.
Some very quick mathematics will disprove the Apple TV theory pretty quickly.
Apple will not, I believe, sell a 50″ Apple TV cheaper than a 27″ Thunderbolt Display which retails for $999. This puts the Apple TV in the $1,500 to $2,000 bracket.
Television sets, in general, last more than 5 years. On average, people replace their TV sets in 7-10 year cycles. There’s no real advancement in TV technology that will necessitate shorter replacement cycles.
Apple TV then will sell in fewer numbers than XServe. And you know what happened to the XServe line after a couple of years of swimming against the tide. Dead as a Dodo.
iCal’ed.
You cannot divine the future while trapped in the current paradigm.
If I told you in 2006 that people would soon buy a $500-$800 smartphone that would revolutionize not only the industry, but the world, you’d have said the same thing you said above and you’d have been just as wrong.
(Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.)
Good point oh drunken one.
(Brought to you by White Castle)
You cannot reach a proper conclusion without knowing all of the variables.
You’ve disproved nothing, except that you’re a genius.
You remind me of somebody:
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” – Palm CEO Ed Colligan, November 20, 2006
Less than two months later, Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his jeans’ pocket and revealed Colligan to be a total fool waiting for his pink slip.
The problem with your screen size:price theory is that TV screens are MUCH lower resolution than computer displays and much cheaper to build. This is why 720p TVs are much cheaper than 1080p TVs. The higher the resolution the more expensive it becomes to manufacture.
It doesn’t matter what the life cycle of the product is in a market that is worth billions and billions of dollars a year – it’s still a viable market to enter.
The Xserve was not a consumer product; it was aimed at small production shops, so it had an *extremely* limited market.
Yes.
Going with name brands:
A 1920 x 1080 27inch monitor can be had for $273 (LG)
A 2560 x 1440 27inch monitor can be had for $680 (HP)
Notice anything DIFFERENT?
Tell that to Visio and the host of no name flat panel TV makers to hit the market since 2005. How are Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic et al doing with their arrival?
What if…. Apple offered subsidized sets for $499 that came with 2 year Comcast contracts?
What? You hate that idea? Twist.
Your prediction assumes that Apple will drop the current AppleTV and produce only TV sets. That would be incredibly short-sighted. I see Apple, if it even gets into the TV set market, having a two-pronged approach:
1) iTV, which has a built-in (and possibly upgradable) iOS powered media hub, which can deliver content, be controlled by gestures, remote(s) like your iPhone/iPad, maybe Siri (I’m not convinced Siri would work unless it is part of your iPhone/iPad as a remote), and some other revolution which pulls all the various devices, content delivery systems, sound systems, etc. together in one easy interface. This would obviously be a premium TV product.
2) AppleTV continues in an upgraded fashion, able to do much of the iTV but no gesture controls, perhaps a lack of other device control, and other limitations. This would capture the lower market of people who don’t want to upgrade their TV sets to a new iTV yet but still want some of Apple’s TV goodies. This lets Apple get into the door, and create the “want” for an iTV later while pulling more consumers into its ecosystem.
McIntyre sounds just like the people who thought the iPod, iPhone and iPad would fail because, ‘We already have other companies that make this stuff.’ Just because other companies make stuff doesn’t mean Apple can’t make it better.
Apple is always late:
30 years late in computers
70 years late in TV
90 years late in radio
110 years late in music reproduction
130 years late in phones
And Microsoft and Google’s forays into these markets is significantly better.
Most people think that Apple will sell screens with some sort of internal electronics. I really doubt that that is where the money is. Just check out the existing TV manufacturers profits. The money will be in a box that everyone will buy and upgrade every few years that gets easy access to all the content they want including their existing video by storing it on iCloud. Money will also be made by selling content.
Right…and check out other computer companies profits….and Nokia….Creative, iRiver, and Sony’s Walkmans….wait, where you trying to convince me of something…?
Please forgive me if it seems like I would try to convince you of something. I know that you are firm in your point of view.
The real barrier is the cable company who wants to rent out a cable box. I hate Comcast with every fiber of my being.
No, they don’t want to rent those. They were REQUIRED to by the FCC.
Things are changing now as systems become ALL digital and they can drop analog since the FAA now allows that.
You will then be able to use a small cheap converter no larger than a Mac Mini
Surely TV’s will just become monitors? Hopefully with one cable for power and connections, and then you can just connect a TV box of some sort (same as the make of the tv, or from someone else of your choice if it’s a standard connection) to offer all the other functionality. In essence the TV box will basically be a computer, but with TV specific connections and software. This would also get people away from having TV’s on their wall with half a dozen cables dangling from them.
I want my Newton!
Come on MDN, this is ridiculous. I love Apple, I trust Apple, and if they put out a TV they may indeed ‘revolutionize’ the TV or how we use it, but the point of the article has a very valid point — the current state of TVs is WELL beyond where PC’s, MP3 players, smart phones, tablets, etc were when the mac/ipod/iphone/ipad/etc came out.
I don’t think the article ever said Apple will fail, it simply said it will face a barrier that it hasn’t had to face before. And this is absolutely true.
That’s what you shortsightedly think today. In 2006, some people – including Palm CEO (see above) – thought exactly the same thing about mobile phones before Apple showed the world how it was supposed to be done.
McIntyre has no valid point, especially since every one of his examples are not of Apple being “first movers,” but rather of Apple being market disruptors.
You’re not getting it. Yes some of his details might be technically wrong but the general idea is correct. It doesn’t matter what ‘some people’ thought about the iphone, or mac, or whatever.
The FACT is that the TV market IS much more established than the cell phone market was. Almost EVERYONE has multiple TVs in their house. Most people have a flatscreen. Many people have a DVR/digital box of some sort.
Could apple revolutionize all of this? OF COURSE! They could come out with a TV that has features people didn’t even consider and in a couple yrs we’ll wonder how we lived without it. But very few people owned a tablet when the ipad came out. Few people owned a cell phone that did much more than make phone calls and take bad pics when the iphone came out. Even less had a computer in their house when the mac came out.
There is most definitely a bigger barrier for Apple if they come out with a TV. Doesn’t mean they won’t bust it down, but it exists.
But NOBODY has a smart TV, as much as they might like to think they do.
I think we’ll all be surprised (or not at all surprised) when we see that yet again, Apple has gone into an existing market, even a heavily competitive and quickly evolving one (identical to the mobile handset market at the time) and flip it upside down with a product that will shift the way all competitors manufacture and market their devices to compete with Apple’s game changer.
I think MDN’s point about a paradigm shift is spot on.
For Apple to be able to pay content owners as much or more than the cable monopolies while offering better value to consumers will be a very difficult task. The problem is not technological, it’s all about CONTENT. That’s the nut that Apple hasn’t been able to crack yet.
Could the ‘New Apple TV’ proponents specifically tell what they want this “Smart TV” to do that the current Apple TV + your monitor of choice doesn’t already do?
Yes, they could build a ‘master’ 50-60″ TV for the living room that can stream various content to ‘satellite’ TVs of 30-40″ throughout the house utilizing 802.11ac or CAT6.
Just a thought…..
I agree that a TV is by itself more advanced than, say, the mass phones prior to iPhone. And I know I personally have no problem with my TV… the TV… but the rest of the experience is ripe for innovation. It’s an interesting situation created by race-to-the-bottom pricing: The TV has less amazing sound then a dedicated sound system, so there are two remote controls if you’re just watching over-the-air broadcasts. Add a BluRay player and you likely have a third remote. Add the AppleTV and you add a fourth remote (although I *love* Apple’s “Learn new remote” methodology). Add a cable TV box and you’ve got not only another remote but a pretty crappy content discovery mechanism *cough – Comcast – cough*. To the less-than-confident-with-technology member of the household, turning on the TV (remote 1), turning on the sound system (remote 2), turning on the content providing device (remote 3) and then telling the sound system which input it should amplify and the TV which input it use is all pretty daunting. So to think there’s anything different about this barrier to entry than the previous ones Apple has tackled is to not look at the full experience, which is where Apple pretty much nails it every time.
I think this guy should ask Vizio and Olevia if Apple can’t break into an existing market like TV. Last I checked, they are giving Sony and Panasonic fits.
Apple also considers market size when bringing out a new product. The size of the Phone market is huge and even today it is growing, leaving tons of “space” for apple to grow within. I’m not sure the “television” market is big enough to lure Apple in at this point and people will not buy a new 50″ screen every 2 or 3 years making “television”, even if successful, kind of a single shot. TV’s are currently low margin and going lower – I don’t get it, hardware-wise there doesn’t seem to be profit.
Maybe Apple is doing something completely different, like TV Glasses that stream from an appleTV and all those large panel displays will be extinct in 5 years. Or something like that because if they can’t completely change the experience, it’s an uphill battle with little pay back.
so far i can’t figure out the point of an apple TV
apple can’t magically get content on there without negotiating expensive contracts.
there is no point in spending $2000 on a TV just for netflix and itunes integration. netflix even says that the PS3 is their most used device
so far apple TV is like google glass. the fans say how cool it is, but there is no real use for it
Are you referring to the rumored future Apple television set or the current AppleTV device? I think the rumors are just that: rumors, usually caused by overheard conversations where context was missed and was all-important.
The present AppleTV device is catching on all over the place; never a barn-stormer but gaining critical mass. At $99 it’s almost a no-brainer addition to the media center. And I’m seeing more and more schools adding them to the projectors in their classrooms since they have projectors and are adding iPads very quickly.
Gee MDN, you are trying just too hard to be faux fair and impartial. I agree with most of your comments about computers and music players, but come on, pull away from the MS teat about tablets.
Sure MS/BG trumpeted tablets since 2001, but come on….. In ten years the entire tablet ‘market’ probably sold fewer in the wild really shipping slates than Apple produced as prototypes for the iPad.
Newton and dynabook? OK, they were there, but the company and product that was the real first mover, making tablets, excuse me, pads, affordable, accessible, and put them into the hands of the general populace of end users was, without a doubt Apple with the iPad, FTW!
Sounds like you got the point but don’t realize it
Here you go… in plain English….lots of years of others failing, then apple comes along and does it right
People buy what works, the iPad, and that is because iPad is the paradigm shift mentioned
they will do the same for “smart TV” as they did for “smart phone” and they will sell more smart TV’s than have been produced so far by all smart TV producers so far (are there really any?)
Damn, I hate it when all of you unimaginative lemmings talk about future tech. Geesh, all you have to do is actually read an article every now and then. For example…
1. TV is rapidly moving towards the 4k tv (Google it), but with the movie industry already adopting 8k technology and has existing hardware and software, tv will bounce right over 4k and go directly to 8k. The main advantage to such resolutions are the larger and much more immersive experience, better than 3d, and you don’t need any lame glasses. Think IMax.
2. This will require videos to be sold as Flash Drives. An 8k video is 32 (possibly 64) times the size of its HDTV equivalent; 16 times the amount of pixels AND it as up to a 120hz frame rate.
3. Corralling all of the competing tv transmission types (cable, broadcast, DSL, etc.) would be like herding cats, but it could be the miracle that the Apple engineers could produce. Such large video data files would need a new compression algorithm, but then Apple could provide all necessary “channels” directly over the internet.
8k video w/ 2000 streaming broadcasts. Granted it’s a ton of data, but who better to push the world into better technology than Apple? With it all fully duplexed digital, it would be up to the individual broadcasts to provide any “on demand” services. Apple doesn’t need to store anything, just act as the switching center. This would benefit the broadcaster with constant viewer info, and control of individualized advertising.
With such an automated data switch, communications between individuals becomes even easier to set up and use.
@aryugaetu:
1) Sony already sells “Ultra HD” 3840×2160 resolution (~4k) televisions. you mean you don’t already have one? Please tell us where you purchase your 4k content.
2) physical recorded media is a good thing. the internet infrastructure in most people’s homes & neighborhoods can’t support streaming 4k video to every home. BluRay remains the de facto standard for high definition video and probably will for several more years because its H.264 / MPEG 4 AVC format will support 4k resolution video. No streaming service even comes close.
3) new compression algorithm not needed. but, not likely that 4k resolution could be supported by current infrastructure or, for that matter, by the iTunes store. i wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Apple to convince all production studios to distribute their products through the Apple middle-man.
4) no, i’m not.
This guy is so off base, I wouldn’t trust him on anything else he writes. He’s supposed to know what’s going on in the tech industry? The iPhone was did to the cell industry what an Apple TV could do for the TV business. Yes there were phones and many even called them smart phones, UNTIL the IPhone came along, Then everybody got it. I hated using the archaic Motorola Razor. It was a nightmare. However it did have internet, contacts etc. etc. etc. the same options as the IPhone except the Razor stunk. Then along came the IPhone and showed people how easy and efficient it could be. I’m writing this from my hotel room with THREE remotes by my side that took me ten minutes to figure how to turn the bleeping TV on. Who do you think will solves this mess that’s been around since the 70’s? It will be Apple! McIntyre, you might really want to redo your research. Just sayin.
Decades before the TV entered the living room there was the radio.
Televisions evolved and the first gen looks absolutely nothing like the latest generation.
Who says Apple can create a ‘shift’ – even in a mature market
I don’t think Apple is going to attempt to just make a better tv. If they do it it will be integrated into their entire eco system somehow. I think subsidised tv’s with content contracts where they can have product cycle refreshes every 2 years or so makes some sense. Whatever they do it will have to blow the other tv makers out of the water for a few years or they won’t even try it. Whatever their plan is it is probably bigger than most are expecting. Whether or not it actually gets implemented remains to be seen.
not sure if your in the right forum !
When I saw the Philips Hue light bulb launch at the AppleStore I started to think that maybe Apple is working with Philips onto something.
Philips technologies, like Ambilight, are well ahead the competition and Philips doesn’t sell 399$ TVs… I don’t know, just thinking aloud (and probably wrong).