This is a poor excuse. Given their moves into content production, Apple should make a real TV and it should be the best TV ever by far.
Not obvious that would be the best strategy. The likely path is to keep improving mobile (largest media consumption in the younger generations) and then get into headsets (AR/VR) and try to be the best at that.
Cue Tim Cook at WWDC: “This is the best TV we’ve ever made by far” “Stunning resolutions” “Gorgeous color” “Starting at $1,999, available for pre-order today”
Samsung Freeplay is really cool, if Apple could make something like that I’d buy it.
The initial reason was that they didn’t have a good distribution (more than a decade ago). It’s feasible now with Apple Store being ubiquitous. Slick hardware + interoperability/UX is nice. Likely need more to capture a large enough market, though.
Rumors were they were considering this years ago, but backed off due to supply chain issues in sourcing.
I think it’s just very hard to get into this market given the price competitive and low-profit margin nature (which is something $AAPL will never do, sell something at a low-profit margin😂) That’s why I would guess they went to an easier way which is to make a cheap box and try to make a good user experience the
What features/experience do you think is missing in current models that apple could possibly solve for ?
I have the feeling that, for them, this would not be a good strategy, specially because they would have to offer a bigger variety of options and it would increase costs and logistics complexity. For them is easier with the TV Box I think.
The problem is without ads it will need to cost 3X as much as the next best tv, and nobody looks at their tv as indispensable as their phone
Jobs would have launched the actual TV despite all the economic analysis saying why not to
Nah. For the same reason they won’t make a car. Much more profitable for them to make just the valuable “smart” part and let everyone else deal with the complex supply chain and commodification.
Apple screens are absolutely beautiful!! But given most of their phones and displays are made by other companies (Samsung and LG respectively), I guess the math might not have worked out
I don’t quite get this viewpoint (though it’s clearly a popular one). Apple TV is my only input device and it’s unclear to me what would be much better if Apple also made the screen itself?
I love the Apple TV. Modular design is a great solution because the important thing about TV isn’t the screen, it’s the content
I have a feeling that they're looking to skip TVs and use high resolution AR/VR displays for that purpose instead.
Going into streaming is about increasing their service revenue. Different business model than hardware. They made AppleTV+ apps for other devices after launching to increase reach & subscriber numbers. Releasing an expensive high end tv would not help them acquire new subscribers. Just the OG HomePod all over again.