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Apple To Start Making TVs?
timothy writes "Apple might want to sell you your next TV,' says this CNN report. Which makes a lot of sense, considering that Apple's razors-and-blades, vertical-marketplace model for iTunes (and the various iDevices) doesn't make as much sense with the world of TV, where your Sony, Samsung, or (egads!) Westinghouse set is just as happy with a Google TV box, or a Roku, or one of many other media devices, as it is with an Apple TV attached."
How would bundling a TV with AppleTV and iTunes NOT be anti-competitive?
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Because of "consumer demand" it:
1) won't support HDCP sources
2) won't have a VGA input, because, hey, it's a TV
3) would be a CRT
4) would be only an HD Ready tv (720p), with 1080i scheduled for next year, and 1080p for the year later (only in the 60hz frequency, and not the 24hz one).
5) would only work with airport-enabled stereo systems for audio output
6) would only play back video from thunderbolt-enabled cameras
7) would refuse to play porn movies even if legitimately bought by the users, because appletvs are for all the family
8) there would be no remote, it's a free app on itunes for iphone 5
9) would only have a single button: the "on" switch (mind you, it turns only on the tv)
10) would only give you fox news, and would refuse to show MSNBC
11) would refuse to work with usb pendrives because it's everything on the cloud
12) would require the user to use a set of apple-branded eyeballs
How does this even remotely "make sense" for Apple? By bundling Apple TV with a TV you are essentially targeting the market who wants, but doesn't currently have an Apple TV and is in the market for a new television.....thats what, maybe hundreds of people tops? The TV market is a commodity market where the interface is usually last on people's list of priorities. Unlike a PC, cell phone, or music player, you almost never interact with the TVs interface, consumers buy based on size, price, connectivity and picture quality. A TV really only needs to be able to turn on and off, switch channels and video inputs.
This ranks up there with some of the stupidest Apple articles I have seen.
Monstar L
A television with a decent user interface! Thats a novel idea.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Most people rarely "interact" with their TV the same way that they rarely interact with their cell phones and mustic players. Note the shift from the prevailing view not all that long ago of "I don't want all these features, I just want to make a damned phone call" to wanting the latest iPhone or Android. Ditto with music players.
These days, when people watch TV, they want to schedule recordings, pause, play, rewind, watch two shows at once with picture in a picture, have a stock ticker running while they watch a comedy, stream video sources, stream audio over the internet while they play a video game, make phone calls, etc. Turning what essentially a dumb disply into a smart device capable of doing that is the next logical step.
So the market that would be targetted is not the existing market of people buying an Apple set top box. Rather, it's people looking for new TVs and, if the rumors are true, the strategy is to get a sizeable portion of that market to buy one that has Apple's iOS built into it. I think that's a reasonable strategy. The biggest obstacle seems to me to not be the market itself but barriers to entry for varioius services. Cable companies hate cable-ready TVs. They absolutely loved the advent of digital TV where they could start encrypting the signal and requiring a set top box in every room. Apple is going to have to pull a rabbit out of the hat to convince cable companies to allow Apple branded TVs to use the Apple interface rather than the set top box of the cable company. As long as consumers pretty much have to use the cable company interface, or as long as cable card is inconvenient to install, it's going to be difficult to break into the market.
That is, until such time as streaming over the Internet is capable of replacing cable service.
Apple already has a device that handles everything the TV needs without having to deal with the TV's problems (backlight, dead pixels, manufacturing problems/"green-ness", etc). My guess is if Apple is looking in this direction, they're going to sell AppleTV equipment to TV manufacturers for integration into their TVs, not their own Apple-branded flat panels. I seriously doubt Apple will release an Apple TV to compete with the Sonys and Philips And Samsungs out there, but Apple will happily sell those companies a plug-in module that'll increase the value of their TVs and increase the userbase of the iTunes store. Maybe Sony won't bite, but the smaller manufacturers might.
bah.
Anti-Competitive needn't be limited to sleazy back room dealings to prevent competitors access to the market.
But Apple hasn't done things to prevent competitors from entering the market; as evidenced by the number of competitors it has in each market it is in.
Apple's devices, in particular, have been unassailable; which puts other CE manufacturers in an awkward position. If Apple could be counted on to add a little "Redmond design" to each product, there would be a more competitive landscape.
Success in the marketplace does not equate to being anti-competitive. In fact, much of what Apple does is rather beneficial to competitors - Apple doesn't slash prices to drive competitors out, they actual tend to keep theirs high even when other products enter their markets, they don't demand exclusivity in order to use their software on a product (they don't even license their OS); they don't limit their competitors ability to distribute and sell their products in the same markets; they don't get other manufacturers together and say "the price of tablets is $600, the price of computers is $900"...
They have a significant presence in the market because their products are popular, not because of any anti-competitive actions on their part.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
All music is DRM-free on iTunes and has been for years, and was made DRM-free at Apple's insistence over years of objections from the music industry.