My two cents.
On yesterday’s announcements from Apple. Many hundreds and thousands of professional and amateur commentators I’m sure have already insightfully and accurately dissected Steve’s keynote and written complete and intelligent reviews of Apple’s new products. So I’m not going to bore you by trying to compete. Just two observations - admittedly first impressions, one which is somewhat tangential but still germane to some of the ideas I’ve been throwing around with respect to the entertainment industry (although I’ve been mainly focused on music and live events.)
- The new Apple TV might just be as transformative for the movie business, as the iPod was for the music business. Very impressed. The rental model also - while not ideal - is probably a good compromise (at least in the short term): a good transition model to clear the way for future business models that are completely digitally native. I would have liked to have seen slightly longer time windows, in particular for the once started viewing - say 48 or 72 hours (instead of 24) but not a bad start. And being able to buy DVD’s with digital copies is also a good idea. (What would be fantastic would be a DVD exchange facility whereby you could exchange your old DVDs for new (HD if available) DVDs that include a digital copy, for say half-price. I think the studios would make lots of money as people would then be motivated to renew their entire DVD libraries at once, and as an added benefit, the old DVDs (collected in bulk) could be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.
- Apple needs just one more piece of hardware - one more appliance - in order to kit out a 21st century digital home: something that combines the Apple TV, with a touchscreen (and iPod Touch GUI) and an amplifier. For anyone that has their home wired with speakers in each room, this appliance would allow you to access your iTunes music and play it through the speakers in each room.
Apple (AAPL) was down heavily yesterday with the rest of the market, but if my first gut feeling about Apple TV is right, it goes from being a very expensive stock to something worth considering once more (especially if this market sell-off knocks it even lower.) Thoughts appreciated. (Disclosure: I own a small number of Apple shares in my pension plan.)
January 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Fodder for thought:
Back in 2003 the NYT wrote an article about how Tivo may get beaten out by PVR boxes provided by the cable provider:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/technology/20tivo.html?ex=1382068800&en=23e461def8d989ad&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
I could not find the industry numbers quickly, but I heard on the This Week In Tech podcast recently that the install base of cable company provided PVRs is on the order of 10X the number of Tivo devices. Tivo, arguably, has better technology, better features and a similar operating cost for the consumer. The cable provided PVR has, as I see it, four big advantages. 1) a guy in a van hooks it up and will fix it if it breaks. 2) consumers pay monthly and have very little up front cost. 3) the price gets bundled in with a a large cable bill making the marginal cost almost invisible. 4) there is no technical decision to be made as the cable company only offers one PVR (hat tip to Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice).
What’s this have to do with Apple? I am of the opinion that Apple TV is analogous to Tivo. They really are at risk of the cable company poaching their business with an alternative set of services/products. These alternatives don’t even have to be all that good. They just have to be easy, installed, bundled, and low incremental cost. How could Apple avoid becoming Tivo? By becoming Scientific American, the set top box company that many cable providers use which was acquired by Cisco. If Apple is able to work out a deal with cable/satellite TV providers to pull Apple hardware and services into the home it will change the landscape. We may come full circle back to where we are using a computer on our TV.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Regarding #2 in your post Sean, the obvious contender is www.sonos.com, a great system I’ve had for a few years that is like a domestic ipod with several zones controlled wirelessly with a small console, which plays/indexes the music seamlessly from iTunes. Surprised Apple hasn’t bought them out yet, or more likely they will blow them out of the water with their own version.