“Apple Inc. customers waiting for the company to revolutionize live television as it did for music and phone service will have to keep waiting, at least until next year,” Peter Burrows, Lucas Shaw, and Gerry Smith report for Bloomberg.
“The company wanted to introduce this year a live TV service delivered via the Internet, but is now aiming for 2016, said people familiar with Apple’s plans. Talks to license programming from TV networks such as those owned by CBS Corp. and 21st Century Fox Inc. are progressing slowly, some of the people said,” Burrows, Shaw, and Smith report. “Apple also doesn’t have the computer network capacity in place to ensure a good viewing experience, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.”
“Without enough content deals in place, Apple has scrapped plans to announce the service at a Sept. 9 event in San Francisco, which would have coincided with the beginning of the new network TV season, the people said,” Burrows, Shaw, and Smith report. “The Cupertino, California-based company still plans to introduce a more powerful version of its Apple TV set-top box at the event, said the people, but customers — for now, at least — will need a cable or satellite TV subscription or an antenna to watch live network television.”
“The main stumbling block is the price of content. Just as Apple once convinced music labels to sell songs for a lowly 99 cents, it wants to offer a package of popular channels for $40 a month, the people said. That’s roughly half of the average cable bill in the U.S.,” Burrows, Shaw, and Smith report. “Talks with CBS, Fox and NBC, owned by Comcast Corp., have been mired for the past several months, said the people.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Eddy Cue without Steve Jobs is a painful thing to witness.
If Steve were still here, who wants to bet this would be all buttoned up by now?
What good is having $200+ billion if you don’t know how to leverage it in order to get the ink you need?
If this report is true, yet another holiday shopping season will be missed.
The “hobby” continues.
SEE ALSO:
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Why are Apple’s cloud services so weak? – August 4, 2015
Apple fails yet again in the cloud: How to use Apple Music without iCloud Music Library – July 23, 2015
Apple Music, Beats 1, App Store service restored after four-hour outage for some users – July 21, 2015
Why Apple’s iMessage is unreliable: Apple is juggling too many balls in the cloud – June 23, 2015
Apple’s iTunes and App stores’ costly 12-hour outage – March 12, 2015
Apple’s iTunes, app stores, iCloud services experience outages worldwide – March 11, 2015
iCloud is a major weakness: Will Apple ever fix it? – January 25, 2015
iCloud accounts at risk after hacker releases tool allowing access to any login – January 2, 2015
Apple’s online stores hit with 2nd outage this week – September 4, 2014
Apple’s Eddy Cue: ‘The TV experience sucks’ – May 29, 2014
Overnight outage of Apple’s iCloud, online store lasted hours – October 9, 2013
Apple’s Eddy Cue ‘very pleased’ with iTunes Radio, looks to go international ASAP; more than 100 countries targeted – October 4, 2013
Service outages affect Apple’s App Store, iTunes, and FaceTime for hours – August 7, 2013
Apple’s iCloud services again hit by worldwide outage – April 23, 2013
Apple confirms multiple service outages; App Store, iTunes and Calendar still down for some – February 21, 2013
Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime suffer another significant outage Sunday – November 19, 2012
Apple’s iTunes Match down as Apple’s iCloud problems continue – November 19, 2012
Apple’s Eddy Cue joins Ferrari board of directors – November 7, 2012