Apple eyeing billion-dollar acquisitions, push into TV market - rumor - Page 2

How much does the Mac Mini cost? Not a mass market device.

An A4 based solution could be built the same size as an iPod Mini. And with a manufacturing cost of $125.

So cheap that the build cost could be subsidized by a $30 per month subscription.
The best place to put it is inside a TV.

C.

There is that rumour of a $99 TV floating around. While I think that it's low it's absolutely possible if Apple wants to finally take the living room and thinks that it can make money on selling/renting content/subscriptions and/or wants to use it as a "halo effect" to sell other Apple products.

I agree that the form factor will probably be somewhat similar to what it is now, it could be made as small as the Nano looking at the iPhone 4 logic board. But that seems to be a lot o over-engineering in an area they don't dominate, so I think that would be prohibitively expensive.

I'd like to think they'll have a cheap steaming-only model for $99 so all TVs in the house can connected and a model that uses the new Mac Mini aluminium design. Still with the A4 SoC/PoP but space for a 3.5" HDD for local storage, like in Popcorn Hour. (okay, now I'm just dreaming. )

Isn't it impossible to HDCP protected content in full resolution over Component? If so, I would think Apple would go for HDMI and optical audio for output to a monitor/HDTV. This would surely help their case with the content owners who are afraid of piracy.

If Apple were smart they'd combine Apple TV, Mac Mini, Airport Extreme and Time Capsule into one device that becomes the hub for all of your other iDevices, such as iPhones, iPads, iMacs, etc. This would allow all those devices to share resources and have easy access to content, as well as act like a mini server and storage device that connects directly to your TV.

Now THAT is something I'd buy.

What do you mean by acoustics?

While I agree that $99 is unlikely, all the components for the iPhone 4 are very condensed and therefore pricier. This would not have to be the case for the next TV. Only the A4 would likely remain at that cost, if not more for the 1080p capable VXD decoder which is likely not in the iPhone 4. Everything else looks to me like it could be made at a reduced price.

I'm not abreast on HDCP issues concerning Component, but it wouldn't surprise me.

It is likely that Apple would put the power supply in the box itself (like they did with the recent Mac mini design). You're right that the logic board would be tiny. Maybe they could move the SD card slot to the front though.

It appears that Apple thinks optical media is dead, but I wonder if it would make sense to try to put a Blu-ray drive in this thing. (I know, I know, Steve thinks Blu-ray is a big bag of pain.)

Agreed. It also turns Apple into a direct competitor with the other content providers, which means their content begins and ends with the content they own. Not a good result. I think they are far better off trying to perfect distribution. They could blow away the competition in set top boxes if they had a serious interest in that market.

Speakers and microphones, I believe.

That's the only thing i can think of but none of that would be needed for the TV. All of that would be taken care of by another device.

Hey Brucep hope you have a quick recovery!

Ps. Always enjoyed your comments!

Best

Your assertions beg the question of how Apple profits from this.

Will the TV set makers give Apple a small cut of the purchase price? Will Apple charge a fee for service? Will the "channel" run iAds but the content be free? A mixture of all of the above?

EDIT: Ah, I see you've already fielded similar questions. Pardon me for responding to your initial post before observing the response thread.

THompson

I have often thought that too. one pwr chord no pwr bricks and one HDMI cable. Think of the reduction of clutter, wires, etc.

Best

Tooting my own horn without shame:

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...45#post1481645
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...65#post1643765
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...77#post1510877
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...89#post1439789

I agree. I'd go for something bigger - especially since Jobs is talking about 'big, bold risks'.

Adobe would be my choice. Then Apple could bring out graphics software that really took advantage of the Mac - it would certainly help to sell more Macs.

I bought my LCD Sony about 4 years ago just before the Internet connect trend started. I also want to upgrade my alarm system to Internet connected model.

Are these TVs wifi enable or ethernet?

I'm not really looking forward to climbing around in the attic with a drill and a spool of Cat 6.

The one thing I don't like is my lack of choices in broadband connectivity. I have cable and the service/price ratio is really terrible.

I've been using a couple of older EyeTV 500 units and the EyeTV software (version 2.X) for a number of years. The software is excellent and the hardware reliable. If Apple could aquire Elgato and incorporate that company's expertise into the next generation Apple TV and give the software an Apple "twist" I think it would be a real winner.

I use EyeTV as well in my office. I have often thought that Apple should buy them, however they are in Spain so I don't know how easy it would be to assimilate their knowledge/technology into the Apple corporate culture.

this is all great speculation...I could even see Apple pairing with ATT's new U-Verse cable. Keeping it in the family, but in a good way. Apple does the UI for ATT program guide, includes a link to iOS, or even integrating the Cable Guide into the UI like an app. A DVR would have to happen thougth, and given that Jobs hates moving parts in his devices, a 64 GB hard-drive would hardly do it for a DVR. I could definately see that. Yet another thing for ATT to push. My household has thought of switching to ATT U-Verse, but the channel guide sucks, and it's about the same price as we pay for our Charter Cable and Internet.

My only consideration as to this being out of the question to a potential cable partner would be the Pay-per-View service. Itunes would eat into those profits and it would be a huge compromise for a cable company (as many are just skidding by on fumes) for apple to eat into what little profits they already make. On the Apple side, having to give up a little reliability of service, granted cable is (IMO) more reliable than SATV or DirectTV. But if it's ATT, most people would already know the story there.

to add to my previous post...
It could be that Apple just releases an updated ATV box with the iOS built-in, and then let the cable/SATV/Dish/Over-air companies come up with Apps for the device. For example, if you have Cable (i.e. Charter, ATT, Comcast, etc). They would be able to offer an App for the ATV that allows a cable guide and DVR or OnDemand programming. We've already seen an ABC TV app for the iPad, why not NBC, CBS, TBS, FOX, etc. probive thier own app?

Heck, this in a way could elimante the need for Cable/SATV providers in general...It would also eliminate the need for scheduling, for the Neilson Ratings as well, they could track viewership by hits to shows and streams. Many how cool would that be? A-la-Carte TV, just the way iTunes does

Based on what we know of the iPhone4 - an A4 based AppleTV could be manufactured for around the $100 - $150 mark.

But if Apple charged $150, I think that would be 150 dollars too much. Because the lesson of the (intel) AppleTV and TiVo and what have you is that consumers don't want to pay for add-on boxes. They prefer to pay for content.

Which is why I think a 24 month iTunes subscription (which happens to come with free hardware) would be a much better way of pricing this for the mass market. That subscription would pay for a handful of premium shows, an unlimited amount of advertising sponsored free content. And you could pay on-demand for HD movies whenever you want.

If the AppleTV is to make the move from hobby to business, it will take a bold step.

C.

I think $99 to $150 is low enough for people to risk the expense in droves, even if they just use it to stream their iTunes, iPhoto content to their TVs.

What I would like to see is exactly what you state about paying for content. I'd like to see Apple make a cable box that uses Cable Cards so it can be bought, or they can get partners to overtake the cable boxes we rent from other vendors. As was pointed out to me last time I made mention of this, as I erroneously thought Scientific Atlanta had a monopoly on cable box sales, this may be way to complex for them to tackle.

Consumers do not perceive a 3" device as a television. And a large screen HDTV cannot sell for $99, let's get real. Consumer expectations in regards to CE pricing has really gotten out of hand. We should expect to pay higher prices in the future as the dollar drops and the Chinese labor market demands to be treated better.

Most consumer electronics companies are very low margin. Apple does not want to play in that space. And furthermore, even if Apple did decide to produce a television, they would probably walk away from almost every industry standard established and produce a set with perhaps one HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a USB port and those "combined" audio ports that Apple uses on other devices.

There was a time when I thought that Apple should produce an A/V receiver, because the user experience on most current receivers is absurdly bad and complex, but lately I've decided that Apple is not the right company to build such a device. While their drive for simplicity is worthy in theory, they would probably destroy much of the needed capability and quality of a modern audio receiver. Steve only believes in portable devices anyway.


In regards to other posters' comments, Apple is not going to buy either ABC or NBC. Such networks might not even exist in ten years, the business is risky and it's also relatively low margin with very high infrastructure and content development costs. And even if he wanted it, any attempt by Jobs to purchase ABC would be seen as a conflict of interest. He would have to resign his seat on the Disney Board to do so. In fact, if he tried to acquire NBC, he'd also probably have to resign from the Board.

And Steve has already commented that he'd never buy an MSO cable company, because there are none that cover the entire U.S.

So I'm guessing that if Apple is going to get involved with TV, it's going to be something that makes it easier for consumers to get content onto their devices, but I'm unsure as to what form that would take.

¿Que? is your argument that the name is wrong or are you under the impression that TV has a monitor because it has the letters 'T' and 'V' in it?

Don't Scientific Atlanta and Motorola have the market to themselves, more or less?

We have a Motorola box. It's completely awful in every respect. Apple could beat the poop out of Moto in this market, if they wanted to get into it -- but aren't cable cards essentially obsolete technology?

Possible targets if they really wanted to break in to the TV STB business

Motorola - #1 in the world
Pace - #2 in the world
Thomson - #3 in the world
Cisco - #4 in the world

Well actually Pace Thomson and Cisco are all tied or nearly ties. Of the four Pace makes sense, since they have globe solutions, they have CATV, Telco, IP and SAT based solutions. So does Motorola but I highly doubt Motorola will sell that business to Apple, Cisco does not have a global present and doubt they would sell that either.

Lastly, it would need to be more than a $1B more like $4B to $8B acquisition, this is the only way apple could solve it go to market problem in the video world.

I had thought SA pretty much owned it with Moto picking up some slack, but after the last time this rumour came out after Jobs mention of the cable company conundrum i made a similar, yet more detailed post about what I hope would happen, suggesting that selling to cable providers might be a way to get the AppleTV OS into the home, but I was informed there are many companies and the dominance is very regional. It appears that I just happen to travel to areas mostly dominated by SA cable boxes.

hate to tell you Motorola does not do the software or control on the box, this is done by third parties for the cable operators. Be glad you are not on Unvers with AT&T that control by M$ and that really sucks

Why would the cable providers be married to any one box builder? Maybe there's a reason, but I don't know what it could be.


I don't know if it can get any worse than Motorola and TW, but I suppose it's possible. But it would have to be completely unusable, since the system we've got is virtually unusable.

Actually this is not true, Directv make people buy the hardware and it not cheap unless they are doing some sort of deal. The Cable companies do not want to sell hardware to you since they make more money renting the hardware. A STB cost them between $50 and $250 and then rent them to you for at little as $3 to $15 a month depending on the feature and these product are usually in the field for 5 to 7 years so do the math you see why they do not want you owning your hardware.

The FCC is in the process of outlawing STB or at least one which are locked to 1 provider which is the way it is done today. There was talk about a software encryption solution which would allow any STB to be plugged into any provider but that failed and I believe Apple was waiting for this to happen then they could sell boxes at retail to anyone.

I don't live in the US.
But I thought the FCC was in control of broadcast and satellite communications. Do they also control what comes in through the internet?

C.

Most Cable provide buy form Motorola, Cisco or Pace these days, some providers so single source with one which goes back to the good old boy network.

I can tell some Motorola solutions work really well depending on the provider, all the STB is doing is decoding the transmitted signal and putting up the on screen messages and guides. It has been my experience when the video looks bad it is the cable operator's fault they doing something screw at the head end. Same thing if the guild does not work right it was who every the cable operator contracted to develop guide.

This is the reason I use Directv, best in class video and theirs just works and it all digital unlike the Cable guys many times they digitize a analog signal which has lots of noise on it, they do not bother cleaning it up.

Consumers prefer $0.00 - it's the right price for a content box.


With all respect. I don't think that is ever going to happen.
I don't think Apple have any interest in facilitating the delivery of other peoples content.
What Apple wants is people to buy Apple content streamed from Apple servers and paid for via Apple iTunes.

C.

i can never remember john malone's company? that gets you direcTV & sirius/xm in one deal...

I feel for you, don't have to pay a licensing fee to watch TV in England. No the FCC does not control what broadcast through the internet, but Cable operator control the access to the internet and most all of them have put upper limits on how much internet traffic you can recieve so watch TV over the internet is not a very good experience, plus it assuming a clear path which you can not get in IP based network especially ones that server multiply purposed.

"They'll find out sooner or later." -- S. Jobs.

What if they are going in with Google on the dark fiber?

Ok, I don't think so either but it would be another kick in the butt of a moribund, uncompetitive industry.

Will not happen, Apple would have to buy the cable card from Motorola since Motorola own the IP and the only manufacturer of the cable card today, Cisco and Pace both buy from Motorola, I do not think Apple would want to give Motorola a heads up on what they are doing, considering Apple put the screws to them with ROKR phone.

My idea makes the box free or rented for the consumer as they are selling to the cable providers, not the consumer.


I don't think it'll happen either, but I'd like to. Note that historically, Apple's primary focus has been on HW sales and their primary profits are from HW. I think even the iPad takes in more revenue than all their SW and services combines. Charing a $1.29 for a song and $3 for a movie isn't going to make giving away TVs profitable. I think they are better off adding features like an iOS SDK for TV and then selling the HW, apps and content to consumers.

The BBC licence/license fee is both deeply unfair .... but is also extraordinarily good value. It's a love/hate historical anomaly thing.

So...

However the AppleTV evolves, It will remain as a device that connects a television screen to internet delivered content. It's not going to turn into a cable box or a TiVo.

And if there are technical limitations on the volume of data now. There were many more restrictions in the past and there will be far fewer restrictions in the future.

Currently, in the UK for instance, all of the BBC content is available in standard-def over the internet via the iPlayer. Some of it is in HD.

TV and Movies are just files. The internet is designed to move files. And keeps getting better at it.
This trend will continue.


C.

If you check my posts.... I am proposing an iTunes subscription model.
Charging $30 a month for 24 months = $720.
Charging $40 a month for 24 months = $960
It would not take much financial magic to magically disappear the hardware costs in there.

C.

You may be onto something there. More than a few have wondered if that may be the reason Apple has put so much energy into lowering Adobe's value....

I highly doubt this will happen. Like i said in a post earlier, i think it's going to be something like iOS in a new form-factor STB. If anyone has noticed yet, there are several apps out there that are surfacing to replace regular over-air TV. Hulu App with subscription, Netflix app, ABC Network App. and now HULU's subscription App. So i think the iTunes subscription would be overkill and unnecessary.

The partnering with ATT and U-Verse IMO is the most likely sinario if they want to start cannibalizing the traditional STB. But even that's a long shot. I could easily see the "App" format as the new way to market the aTV.

CBS, FOX, NBC and ABC are the big 4, they are owned by larger companies that own many many more Cable networks (i.e. Disney owns ESPN, ABC, etc.). The Big companies start investing in the App idea for TV, we might see the end of Network TV and more of the a-la-carte programming, exactly the way SJ want's it...