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Technorati ProfileTV: Apples’ Next Conquest – It’s the Buttons Stupid
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Steve Jobs has completed the third chapter of what I see as a 4-part story to take over entertainment.
In chapter 1, he built a little film company called Pixar that helped a bigger company Disney stay relevant during an otherwise tough time for the mouse. Since Pixar’s films represented the lion’s share of revenue during their relationship, and Disney never developed any of their own digital skills, they picked up Pixar – along the way making Steve Jobs the single largest shareholder of Disney stock.
In chapter 2, while music industry exec played ivory tower games and attempted to turn off the internet with attorneys and fruitless DRM efforts, Steve took the novel approach of vertically integrating music distribution with the personal computer and a line of devices that turned digital music into mobile assets that you could pack in your pocket. These efforts have put Apple on a path that today controls over 70% of digital music sales and could account for 28% of all music sales in 5 years.
In chapter 3, Steve decided that he could apply his smarts to the telecommunications industry, in one fell swoop, creating more innovation with the iPhone than the industry had seen since the creation of the mobile phone itself – fundamentally changing the way people interact with their phones.
Obviously much more can be written about each of these chapters, as well as the previous period which led to this series of breakthroughs, however the point of this post is a prediction about what I believe will be the next major chapter in the Apple Story:
CHAPTER 4: Re-inventing Television
Image: Dan Wiersema (http://www.danwiersema.com/)
Like music distribution and the mobile phone, the television industry finds itself in a transitional period. The industry has been devoid of significant innovation since the advent of color. HD, cable, satellite, DVRs, and now Internet TV are fairly obvious, incremental improvements, but even these improvements lfailt to deliver a fulfilling user experience. It’s the same vacuum that was felt by the music industry, and the mobile phone user before Apple delivered their solution. It’s a huge market to boot, and Apple now knows everything it needs know to enter in a meaningful way.
Here are some of the factors that frame this prediction:
- Apple has significant investments in flatscreen manufacturing with Samsung and LG
- the current Apple TV box is a test, to learn things about the market and user experience
- The experience of flattening hardware ala MacBook Air enables Apple to fit lots of gear in the back of an LCD case
- A line of high quality, flatscreen TVs with wifi + storage + an elegant remote + great media browsing UI would be a leap ahead for the TV marketplace (my Motorola DVR remote control has more buttons than my computer keyboard – count ‘em) – clearly an area where some iPhone like UI magic could assist
I’d suggest that Apple’s entry into the convention TV marketplace is inevitable – guessing when is a much harder task. Analyst Piper Jaffray suggests it will be in 2011, but I think we might hear something as soon as at the June 2009 Developer Conference.
There are many more reasons why this is a great next step for Apple – share your thoughts in the comments.
Does this mean I need to wait to buy another computer? Actually, this is so intriguing! Are any deals being made with content creators that you know of? You can't sell an empty pipeline.
Ha! You weren't kidding, you really have spent a lot of time thinking about this!
The current Apple TV device gives them a chance to really try things out and start establishing those deals. Working with that group with be a good starting point, even though adoption is so-so now, a new integrated-TV could really explode. Having some pre-existing, maybe exclusive content distro deals on the Apple/iTunes/TV platform could be really interesting at that point.
You must not have kids. iPad as a remote? What parent would want to risk that? Plus it's too cumbersome to deal with while watching tv. I agree (I assume) that the television experience must be personalizable (is that a word?), but it needs to be sleek and extremely simple…almost non-existent.
The lack of innovation from Apple in this space is shameful. I think GoogleTV is a step in the right direction and is more inline with what you originally stated…but I don't think it is a game changer. That being said I do think Jobs was going to let AppleTV die, but now that Google is in the game and will release a much superior product…I bet that Apple changes course and goes all out. Though Android's popularity and rapidly evolving OS may not allow Jobs to completely focus on AppleTV.
Thoughts?
Is that THE John B?
Details on the next gen of the AppleTV are leaking: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/the-next-apple...
Following Apple's minimalistic design aesthetic, they are 'taking away' local storage, and maybe doing even more on the remote.
Your comments re: kids is a good one, but easily solved with an iPad cover. The possibility of using an iPad to browse live video TV and film previews is super exciting – live video on the remote has never been possible, even with the top-of-the-line Logitech Harmony series remotes.
GoogleTV is a step in the right direction, but I'm in the camp that thinks Google will be chasing Apple with Android and every other non-ad product they try to go after for the next 15 years – but that is for another post.
One more comment on the iPad – more than a personal device, I think of it as a coffee-table device. It is a bridge for application developers to work on bigger displays – to ultimately get to the TV. iPad Scrabble and the iPhone Scrabble Tile Rack are a great example of how apps for the family might totally change the way people think about the TV.