Let’s not forget Apple’s licensing of MacOS twenty years ago, I had a Mac clone, the Motorola StarMax at my work. A fairly vanilla box, but a decent value based on the specs compared to Apple’s offering - it did have some issues, and I always believed that Apple half-heartedly supported the hardware. If I’m not mistaken one of the first things Jobs did was pull the plug on this program when he returned to Apple in 1997. What if Apple continued that licensing program (back then) to PC powerhouses like Dell and HP. What if today they decided to license iOS to Samsung, Huawei, et al.
We have notable traffic from inside the WSJ networks.
Many crap articles, online or off, are top-down in origin. Narrow-minded rightwing blather like Faux News are notorious for this being policy - even with like-minded staff. Pointing this out on some sites can get you banned. Which is another editorial privilege. It is sad to see the WSJ go down this path; but, still, what many folks expected from sale of the paper.
And IMHO the change has affected the quality of economic analysis, geopolitics. I manage my own retirement account and, frankly, WSJ has become useless.
Ben Thompson is often wrong. His problem is he looks at the present and then mistakenly believes that there are always a small number of variables that controlled an outcome that he is uniquely able to divine, and then he makes a broad prediction, when in reality there are so many variables that control an outcome. For example, just a short while back he scoffed at Apple ever being a major player with services, saying they were terrible at it and could never compete with Google that was so far ahead. In reality, Apple was already a major player in Services (the App Store anyone?) and Apple's services will soon hit $50 Billion in revenue. In the issue at hand, he wrote his article too soon, as more news came out, it turns out that Samsung and others actually experienced greater declines because of China.
The bulk of Apple’s services come from their cut of IAP as well as what they charge for cloud storage. And I think AppleCare and MFI is thrown in that line item too. Technically you could consider those services but I wouldn’t treat them the same as other companies services, especially software as a service companies.
That is incorrect.
Can you show us a breakdown of Services from Apple? I've never seen that in their financials.
It seems more like a confirmation that Apple is continuing to shift their strategy. Apple is not likely to make a standalone TV now. Yes, Apple Music was on android but further evidence that the shift is happening away from the walled-in strategy with their hardware.
On another note, having read Appleinsider for many years. Did WSJ do some sort of harm to AI? The attacks and defensiveness of some recent AI articles is off-putting.
There's no shift. Apple never announced, nor likely ever intended, to make a standalone TV and compete in the low profit commoditized world of TV screens. Never made any sense. There's nothing for Apple to offer, when they are all buying their screens from a couple of manufacturers and bundling them in their own package. In contrast, Apple TV is a high margin, very differentiated product that enhances the Apple ecosystem for its customers.
Are you referring to the Apple TV box? How is it a very differentiated product? It’s basically an overpriced TV streaming box. If it was everything you say why would Apple be offering AirPlay and iTunes on other people’s hardware? And everyone here talks about TVs as being low margin commodities but if Apple got in the TV set business tomorrow you’d all be singing a different tune explaining why it makes perfect sense.
Yep. DED is getting to be like those religious nuts that announce the day the world will end and Jesus returns to earth because they figured it out in the Bible. Then when it doesn't happen they go back and give another reason for another date. How many countless Anti-Samsung words have been written by DED and echoed by his many AI readers? Now Apple is desperately playing catch up to other services like Amazon and Netflix that have been on these tv's for years. This should have happened two years ago but everything get dragged out forever under Cook.
It seems more like a confirmation that Apple is continuing to shift their strategy. Apple is not likely to make a standalone TV now. Yes, Apple Music was on android but further evidence that the shift is happening away from the walled-in strategy with their hardware.
On another note, having read Appleinsider for many years. Did WSJ do some sort of harm to AI? The attacks and defensiveness of some recent AI articles is off-putting.
Yep this is a big shift. I expect Apple TV puck to go the way of the AirPort router - no new versions until it can be safely killed off because Apple is on enough TVs in 3-4 years. (Also Apple is playing catchup here.)
TVs supporting AirPlay2 and an iTunes app for TVs tell me two things:
1) Apple has completely abandoned the idea of offering their own TV hardware (if that was ever really a possibility anyway)
2) Apple's upcoming video service is going to be a lot more than just some free original content to sweeten the deal for existing Apple hardware owners (as some sources have suggested)
Personally I'd like to see Apple make their TV app the center of the Apple TV experience. Right now it's confusing with so many different apps and interfaces, some of which work with the TV app while others don't.
1) Apples next Apple TV is gonna be a powerhouse. At least with an A10 chip. If Apple can go all out with an A12X chip with a focus on gaming there will be many benefits of owning one.
2) Free on Apple devices but paid on on other devices would be wonderful!
The TV App fails when it crams in purchasable content with your paid content. Makes me skip the mess. They could easily add an "iTunes" tab if they still want us to buy more but mixing it in with my viewable content is confusing.
Gaming is the only reason why I would see Apple Keeping the Apple TV around now (remember its only a hobby). Maybe they could added Thunderbolt support to the Apple TV and allow eGPUs to hook up to it to run more intense games, other than that once iTunes is on enough TVs why keep the hockey puck around.
Yep. DED is getting to be like those religious nuts that announce the day the world will end and Jesus returns to earth because they figured it out in the Bible. Then when it doesn't happen they go back and give another reason for another date. How many countless Anti-Samsung words have been written by DED and echoed by his many AI readers? Now Apple is desperately playing catch up to other services like Amazon and Netflix that have been on these tv's for years. This should have happened two years ago but everything get dragged out forever under Cook.
You say a lot of words without conveying any intelligent thought.
1 What DED article about Apple missed a prophetic date? You're not pointing to any, just blowing out hot air to attack a fake strawman. 2 Samsung's status and trajectory have been correctly laid out in various articles. You can call this "Anti-Samsung" but that doesn't mean anything, does it? Would you prefer inaccurate articles you could enjoy getting dumber as you read them, so long as they felt "Pro Samsung"? That says more about you. 3 Apple has frequently been in the position of "catching up," that was the basis of the article https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/05/14/editorial-when-apple-is-2-years-behind-you-put-your-things-in-order
4 Look how much money Amazon and Netflix have made in the last few years selling content while Apple hogged $1T from phone hardware. First mover advantage didn't keep iPhone competitors on top, didn't keep Apple from entering the watch market, and hasn't stopped Apple from finding HomeKit adoption. So how will today's content services keep Apple with its decade of iPhone cash and industry influence from moving into their business, any more than Palm or Microsoft or Sony or Rolex kept Apple out?
What exactly is your point? You didn't make one, just threw out some nebulous thoughts as if they proved something. Cook should have distracted his company with TV shows over the past few years rather than pulling all the profits from smartphones? What a stupid thing to say.
Amazon missed any participation in the $1Trillion phone hardware business with the Fire Phone fuckup. Bezos should have spent the last 5 years selling a profitable phone vs. giving away Alexa appliances that don't make any money and really don't sell a damn thing from its online store. Netflix made a great show with a serial rapist as the star, and did nothing about it until the situation imploded. Now it's a toxic property. Yes, tell us all about how much smarter you are than the most competent operational CEO, and how you would have spent Apple's resources to accomplish something worthless rather than building the most valuable company on earth (in pure financials, if not currently in the whims of the last investors to trade Apple stock). You are so very smart.
Gaming is the only reason why I would see Apple Keeping the Apple TV around now (remember its only a hobby). Maybe they could added Thunderbolt support to the Apple TV and allow eGPUs to hook up to it to run more intense games, other than that once iTunes is on enough TVs why keep the hockey puck around.
Wow you're also an engineer.
Thunderbolt is an Intel technology that requires an expensive Core processor and chipset. Yeah, an $800 Apple TV would be a real barnburner, esp given that it couldn't play any iOS games. That is actually called a Mac mini, which isn't selling 10-15M units per year like Apple TV is. An eGPU solution would be several hundreds of dollars on top, so yeah, great idea to make Apple TV more relevant for TV gamers!
Apple TV was mainly about iTunes movies when it was a "hobby," but if you've been paying attention. It was back in 2014 that Tim Cook said that it's hard to continue referring to the Apple TV as a 'hobby' with more than $1 billion in sales in 2013--that was when it was selling ~10M units a year. The iOS Apple TV has now sold around 65M. That's more than half the size of the installed base of Macs, even if some of those aren't being used anymore.
Adding AirPlay 2 and iTunes support to Samsung TVs expands the ecosystem, but for people who want Apple TV for all of its other tvOS apps and games (which are mostly just OK, versions of mobile games that often use iAP rather than being great games unto themselves), it's no big deal to get a $99 box to make their "smart TV" more usable and less spy-like into their privacy. Smart TVs all collect and sell your behavior data to third parties, which is where most of their profit margin comes from.
The future of Apple TV is using increasingly fast chips from previous years' iPad to deliver a cost-effective media streamer with the ability to run iOS apps ported to tvOS. That's exactly what Apple is doing, and you haven't offered any smart ideas for improving upon that strategy. Thunderbolt and eGPU are flat out idiotic for a TV box.
Apple stole the limelight at CES without even appearing as an exhibitor, thanks to a series of announcements from Samsung and a series of other television makers incorporating Apple's AirPlay 2 wireless streaming in their products, including LG, Sony and Vizio. This news was cynically portrayed as a "strategy reversal" and a new effort at "copying Microsoft" by the Wall Street Journal -- and out here in the real world, it is nothing of the sort.
Apple seems to think people will use AirPlay 2 on a variety of devices once they get a taste
In his piece "Apple's Next Move: Be More Like Microsoft," Christopher Mims portrayed Apple as making a "radical shift in its corporate strategy" by licensing the AirPlay protocol and supporting iTunes content playback on non-Apple platforms.
Most of the coverage of CES that I saw was about Google Assistant getting into everything and challenging Alexa in the Home.
This is just Apple desperately playing catchup. About time on HomeKit and AirPlay getting into more products. They should have been doing this last year if not two years ago. But it seems that Cook under invests in so much. ( His moto should be "Go Small" ) This is news because it Apple putting their work on a Samsung Device (I guess this is what ThermoNuclear in the Cook age looks like)
I've decided that the existence of Alexa is good for Apple. Alexa in homes keeps the Google Assistant out until Apple finally ships a decent Siri on a reasonable HomePod (HomePod 2.0 will come in the next year and be smaller and cheaper. Hopefully these TVs will be able to AirPlay to them).
There is nothing new that numerous commentators hate the "garden wall style" of Apple and embrace the "openness" of Microsoft. They'll take any opportunity to take a shot at Apple. Haters will hate.
For most of it’s history Apple used proprietary technology to lock in customers. The Apple Display Connector is a prime example. The walled garden was ostensibly only for security but also functioned as a form of lock in. Apple has attached DRM to their books despite it being based upon the ePub format. That forces customers to use Apple devices and their reader to use content that without drm would be easily accessible on any digital device.
Not an Apple ‘hater’ - I am a customer since before the Mac who never had to switch to Apple because I stuck it out. Been a shareholder since the time of the OS X Public Beta- when I saw the new OS I knew Apple had a bright future and started investing in stock. I am typing this on an iPad Pro with a series 4 Watch on my wrist and an iPhone X S on the table next to my chair. There is a Mac Pro and a new Mac mini at home along with the 4K Apple TV. I don’t think I qualify as an Apple hater but I think they are far from perfect, benign or as consumer friendly as they once were.
As to Microsoft, that company is now more valuable than Apple, as they should be, and is better run. Windows 10 Pro is by far the best version they have ever made- that is not true of the current mac OS. The Surface is a far better mobile device than the iPad Pro if you need a serious computing device and the variety of hardware available to run Windows is far superior to what Apple offers currently.
Anyone who thinks this isn’t a significant shift in strategy is blind. And stop bringing up iPod. The Mac in the early 2000s was nothing like iOS is today. The only way Apple was going to grow iPod (and iTunes) sales was viWhere did you find thta Windows. That is absolutely not the case today. Of course if Apple is building something to compete with Netflix/Amazon/HBO then yeah that services needs to be everywhere. But that is a strategy shift.
The latest episode of Ben Thompson’s excellent podcast explains it well.
If DED thinks this is the right strategy then that’s what he should be arguing and providing reasons why he thinks it’s the right business move.
Regarding AirPlay, the shift is that Apple has become the defacto standard at the high end of the market, and if you want to play there, you should support the standards. So Samsung, el al, comes to Apple. Not the other way around.
Where did you find that it was the TV manufacturers begging Apple for approval and not Apple readying the ground for their (rumored, and for 4 years now) upcoming TV service by approaching Samsung and others and working out the details for inclusion of AirPlay/iTunes. I really doubt that any of the OEM's are paying Apple a dime for licensing, but I'm prepared to be wrong.
It seems more like a confirmation that Apple is continuing to shift their strategy. Apple is not likely to make a standalone TV now. Yes, Apple Music was on android but further evidence that the shift is happening away from the walled-in strategy with their hardware.
On another note, having read Appleinsider for many years. Did WSJ do some sort of harm to AI? The attacks and defensiveness of some recent AI articles is off-putting.
There's no shift. Apple never announced, nor likely ever intended, to make a standalone TV and compete in the low profit commoditized world of TV screens. Never made any sense. There's nothing for Apple to offer, when they are all buying their screens from a couple of manufacturers and bundling them in their own package. In contrast, Apple TV is a high margin, very differentiated product that enhances the Apple ecosystem for its customers.
Are you referring to the Apple TV box? How is it a very differentiated product? It’s basically an overpriced TV streaming box. If it was everything you say why would Apple be offering AirPlay and iTunes on other people’s hardware? And everyone here talks about TVs as being low margin commodities but if Apple got in the TV set business tomorrow you’d all be singing a different tune explaining why it makes perfect sense.
It's very differentiated from just an app on a TV for what it can do.
You wonder why Apple would license Airplay to the TV manufacturers? Because Apple is smart and knows that although millions own an Apple TV, a much larger market doesn't own the Apple TV, so they can keep selling the Apple TV for those who want a premium experience, but still offer multiple ways for folks to access their upcoming streaming services.
I don't think many reasoning people would think Apple offering a TV screen makes much sense. You may not believe TV's are low margin, commoditized products, but you might want to read the Vizio CEO's recent comments when he said it was an incredibly low margin business, about 6%, and that the only way they make it is by selling your personal information to advertisers and such. Why would Apple buy screens from LG and Samsung to make a TV set that is like everyone else's, just to jump into a hyper-competitive market that would drain huge resources to lose money when they can make large amounts of money selling Apple TV's and services on others sets?
It seems more like a confirmation that Apple is continuing to shift their strategy. Apple is not likely to make a standalone TV now. Yes, Apple Music was on android but further evidence that the shift is happening away from the walled-in strategy with their hardware.
On another note, having read Appleinsider for many years. Did WSJ do some sort of harm to AI? The attacks and defensiveness of some recent AI articles is off-putting.
Apple was never going to make a stand alone TV, Why? It was and has always been a silly rumor. Profit margins on TVs is small. Few people are going to rush out and replace their perfectly good TV for a over priced Apple TV. They are also large and take up a lot of space. Really, what more is it going to do over a Small box that can be added to any TV and at a fraction of the price.
I've had Airplay on my Yamaha surround sound receiver. I access icloud on my Windows computers for years. Really, Apple is doing what they've always done. Steve Jobs was talking about having FaceTime on Android. That didn't happen, but it still like to see it. Let me know when imessage is on other platforms. That would be nice. Everyone could be blue bubbles.
Every time I’m in Best Buy the TV section of the store is the most crowded. Over the holidays I’ve had numerous family members and friends upgrade their non-smart TVs to smart TVs. Smart TVs are incredibly popular. It’s very convenient to have the capabilities built right into the TV with no need to spend additional money on a separate box and separate cables. If Apple ever got into the TV set business it wouldn’t be about making large profits on the TV it would be about using the TV to sell their original content programming service. For now Apple has decided to just give the service to existing TV makers. But I think Apple is great with displays and could probably make a really great TV. Maybe it wouldn’t have iPhone like margins but if it’s there to sell TV subscriptions so what.
Apple isn't going to do anything with a TV screen that Samsung and LG can and Apple would just be buying their screens. That's the problem, everyone has great screens. We've reached a point where they are a commoditized product with almost no profit margins. Again, look at what the Vizio CEO just admitted--it's a 6% margin industry and Vizio sets have got great reviews, but they are staying in business only because they can sell your information. It isn't like 15-20 years ago when people gladly paid a premium for a Sony screen as it was noticeably different.
Anyone who thinks this isn’t a significant shift in strategy is blind. And stop bringing up iPod. The Mac in the early 2000s was nothing like iOS is today. The only way Apple was going to grow iPod (and iTunes) sales was via Windows. That is absolutely not the case today. Of course if Apple is building something to compete with Netflix/Amazon/HBO then yeah that services needs to be everywhere. But that is a strategy shift.
The latest episode of Ben Thompson’s excellent podcast explains it well.
If DED thinks this is the right strategy then that’s what he should be arguing and providing reasons why he thinks it’s the right business move.
Personally I think it’s a good move by Apple, although am unsure of the benefits to me - can I cast games to the TV? There’s a lot of app specific support like Netflix or YouTube that casts to my LG TV already.
I have a feelimg though though that if the analysts and WSJ were demanding that Apple open up then DED would be penning a polemic about why Apple would never do that, if he hasn’t already.
Anyone who thinks this isn’t a significant shift in strategy is blind. And stop bringing up iPod. The Mac in the early 2000s was nothing like iOS is today. The only way Apple was going to grow iPod (and iTunes) sales was via Windows. That is absolutely not the case today. Of course if Apple is building something to compete with Netflix/Amazon/HBO then yeah that services needs to be everywhere. But that is a strategy shift.
The latest episode of Ben Thompson’s excellent podcast explains it well.
If DED thinks this is the right strategy then that’s what he should be arguing and providing reasons why he thinks it’s the right business move.
Ben Thompson is often wrong. His problem is he looks at the present and then mistakenly believes that there are always a small number of variables that controlled an outcome that he is uniquely able to divine, and then he makes a broad prediction, when in reality there are so many variables that control an outcome. For example, just a short while back he scoffed at Apple ever being a major player with services, saying they were terrible at it and could never compete with Google that was so far ahead. In reality, Apple was already a major player in Services (the App Store anyone?) and Apple's services will soon hit $50 Billion in revenue. In the issue at hand, he wrote his article too soon, as more news came out, it turns out that Samsung and others actually experienced greater declines because of China.
The bulk of Apple’s services come from their cut of IAP as well as what they charge for cloud storage. And I think AppleCare and MFI is thrown in that line item too. Technically you could consider those services but I wouldn’t treat them the same as other companies services, especially software as a service companies.
App store is likely biggest portion, but just about every category of service is exploding and dominating the industry- including Apple Music and Apple Pay, along with long time revenue producer iTunes.
TVs supporting AirPlay2 and an iTunes app for TVs tell me two things:
1) Apple has completely abandoned the idea of offering their own TV hardware (if that was ever really a possibility anyway)
2) Apple's upcoming video service is going to be a lot more than just some free original content to sweeten the deal for existing Apple hardware owners (as some sources have suggested)
Personally I'd like to see Apple make their TV app the center of the Apple TV experience. Right now it's confusing with so many different apps and interfaces, some of which work with the TV app while others don't.
1) Apples next Apple TV is gonna be a powerhouse. At least with an A10 chip. If Apple can go all out with an A12X chip with a focus on gaming there will be many benefits of owning one.
2) Free on Apple devices but paid on on other devices would be wonderful!
The TV App fails when it crams in purchasable content with your paid content. Makes me skip the mess. They could easily add an "iTunes" tab if they still want us to buy more but mixing it in with my viewable content is confusing.
Re-focusing the ATV on being a hardcore gaming console is the only reason for it to exist at this point
You must not use Apple TV if you think that streaming airplay to a Samsung TV and using their app will be the same as using your Apple TV box. The interface, capabilities, and privacy are huge reasons to use Apple TV.
Good piece. Sad that WSJ's reporting is so weak now. Wondering if standards are deteriorating across the industry (Bloomberg has had some unsubstantiated reporting too).
Regards, A long time WSJ and Bloomberg reader/user
TVs supporting AirPlay2 and an iTunes app for TVs tell me two things:
1) Apple has completely abandoned the idea of offering their own TV hardware (if that was ever really a possibility anyway)
2) Apple's upcoming video service is going to be a lot more than just some free original content to sweeten the deal for existing Apple hardware owners (as some sources have suggested)
Personally I'd like to see Apple make their TV app the center of the Apple TV experience. Right now it's confusing with so many different apps and interfaces, some of which work with the TV app while others don't.
This idea of an Apple TV never made any sense as Apple doesn't get into low margin, commoditized businesses unless it has something to differentiate it and command a suitable profit margin. Heck, major players like Panasonic and Sony have been pulling back because low margin companies like Vizio have cannibalized sales as consumers can't tell a meaningful difference between the screens (for the most part, now that we are well into HD, 4K, etc., the TV's are all great), leaving the companies to compete on price--not Apple's market.
The correct thing to do - the best strategy would have been to make the Apple TV half as much and make it the premium offering over a Firestick but to populate the installed base of iOS with basic affordable set top boxes that would have rendered this conunumdrum already solved.
The app on one and not the others and some available on old ones but not other old ones - these are terrible omens for this TV service and Apple TV. It’s already been handled the wrong way in the press, and it’s confusing already and most people don’t care about AirPlay 1 or 2. They just look at the phone. The End. If they want Apple content at all - they’d want iTunes and now it’s only in Samsung and Samsung QLED tech is well behind OLED. To say nothing of Tizen.
Apple TV is ridiculously overpriced. I just had a (non-techie) friend text me a little while ago asking what to buy, Fire, Chrome Cast, or Roku. I responded, since they are an Apple household, why not Apple TV? Her response was simple: it's 3x more expensive and for what?
I really don't understand what they are doing with Apple TV. I have one and I like it, but aside from the Apple "experience", what does it offer over the competition? Nothing. I also agree that these latest announcements are not the best omens. I'm confused, and I'm a seasoned Apple user. Will the Samsung TVs only offer iTunes content? Will they get the rumored TV service? Is the TV service falling under the iTunes umbrella? We shall see...
And movie rentals are cheaper from Amazon and FandangoNow! I’ll still pay the premium when I’m using my ATV on my main Panny plasma, but I save with other smart tv options on my Vizio. Apple better lower their prices or how can they compete?
What does the platform have to do with prices on Amazon and FandangoNow? Both apps are available on the Apple TV. Movies Anywhere further blurs the lines between the platforms for most of the major studios. I buy movies wherever they’re the cheapest and watch them all through my Apple TV, even those purchased through Google Play. That’s still not a reason to use the built-in Smart functions of any TV.
It seems more like a confirmation that Apple is continuing to shift their strategy. Apple is not likely to make a standalone TV now. Yes, Apple Music was on android but further evidence that the shift is happening away from the walled-in strategy with their hardware.
On another note, having read Appleinsider for many years. Did WSJ do some sort of harm to AI? The attacks and defensiveness of some recent AI articles is off-putting.
Apple was never going to make a stand alone TV, Why? It was and has always been a silly rumor. Profit margins on TVs is small. Few people are going to rush out and replace their perfectly good TV for a over priced Apple TV. They are also large and take up a lot of space. Really, what more is it going to do over a Small box that can be added to any TV and at a fraction of the price.
I've had Airplay on my Yamaha surround sound receiver. I access icloud on my Windows computers for years. Really, Apple is doing what they've always done. Steve Jobs was talking about having FaceTime on Android. That didn't happen, but it still like to see it. Let me know when imessage is on other platforms. That would be nice. Everyone could be blue bubbles.
Every time I’m in Best Buy the TV section of the store is the most crowded. Over the holidays I’ve had numerous family members and friends upgrade their non-smart TVs to smart TVs. Smart TVs are incredibly popular. It’s very convenient to have the capabilities built right into the TV with no need to spend additional money on a separate box and separate cables. If Apple ever got into the TV set business it wouldn’t be about making large profits on the TV it would be about using the TV to sell their original content programming service. For now Apple has decided to just give the service to existing TV makers. But I think Apple is great with displays and could probably make a really great TV. Maybe it wouldn’t have iPhone like margins but if it’s there to sell TV subscriptions so what.
Nope. Better to NOT integrate the smarts with the big expensive display. You want to upgrade the smart bits more often than the expensive bits, so it makes sense to keep the streaming/gaming/content bit apart from the big expensive display.
Meh. Apple’s not into gaming. Outside of that what really needs to be updated frequently?
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And IMHO the change has affected the quality of economic analysis, geopolitics. I manage my own retirement account and, frankly, WSJ has become useless.
He forgot or left out that Apple had done a deal for AirPlay on HTC phones years ago.
https://appleinsider dot com/articles/16/04/12/apples-airplay-comes-to-android-in-new-flagship-htc-10
1 What DED article about Apple missed a prophetic date? You're not pointing to any, just blowing out hot air to attack a fake strawman.
2 Samsung's status and trajectory have been correctly laid out in various articles. You can call this "Anti-Samsung" but that doesn't mean anything, does it? Would you prefer inaccurate articles you could enjoy getting dumber as you read them, so long as they felt "Pro Samsung"? That says more about you.
3 Apple has frequently been in the position of "catching up," that was the basis of the article https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/05/14/editorial-when-apple-is-2-years-behind-you-put-your-things-in-order
4 Look how much money Amazon and Netflix have made in the last few years selling content while Apple hogged $1T from phone hardware. First mover advantage didn't keep iPhone competitors on top, didn't keep Apple from entering the watch market, and hasn't stopped Apple from finding HomeKit adoption. So how will today's content services keep Apple with its decade of iPhone cash and industry influence from moving into their business, any more than Palm or Microsoft or Sony or Rolex kept Apple out?
What exactly is your point? You didn't make one, just threw out some nebulous thoughts as if they proved something. Cook should have distracted his company with TV shows over the past few years rather than pulling all the profits from smartphones? What a stupid thing to say.
Amazon missed any participation in the $1Trillion phone hardware business with the Fire Phone fuckup. Bezos should have spent the last 5 years selling a profitable phone vs. giving away Alexa appliances that don't make any money and really don't sell a damn thing from its online store. Netflix made a great show with a serial rapist as the star, and did nothing about it until the situation imploded. Now it's a toxic property. Yes, tell us all about how much smarter you are than the most competent operational CEO, and how you would have spent Apple's resources to accomplish something worthless rather than building the most valuable company on earth (in pure financials, if not currently in the whims of the last investors to trade Apple stock). You are so very smart.
Thunderbolt is an Intel technology that requires an expensive Core processor and chipset. Yeah, an $800 Apple TV would be a real barnburner, esp given that it couldn't play any iOS games. That is actually called a Mac mini, which isn't selling 10-15M units per year like Apple TV is.
An eGPU solution would be several hundreds of dollars on top, so yeah, great idea to make Apple TV more relevant for TV gamers!
Apple TV was mainly about iTunes movies when it was a "hobby," but if you've been paying attention. It was back in 2014 that Tim Cook said that it's hard to continue referring to the Apple TV as a 'hobby' with more than $1 billion in sales in 2013--that was when it was selling ~10M units a year. The iOS Apple TV has now sold around 65M. That's more than half the size of the installed base of Macs, even if some of those aren't being used anymore.
Adding AirPlay 2 and iTunes support to Samsung TVs expands the ecosystem, but for people who want Apple TV for all of its other tvOS apps and games (which are mostly just OK, versions of mobile games that often use iAP rather than being great games unto themselves), it's no big deal to get a $99 box to make their "smart TV" more usable and less spy-like into their privacy. Smart TVs all collect and sell your behavior data to third parties, which is where most of their profit margin comes from.
The future of Apple TV is using increasingly fast chips from previous years' iPad to deliver a cost-effective media streamer with the ability to run iOS apps ported to tvOS. That's exactly what Apple is doing, and you haven't offered any smart ideas for improving upon that strategy. Thunderbolt and eGPU are flat out idiotic for a TV box.
Most of the coverage of CES that I saw was about Google Assistant getting into everything and challenging Alexa in the Home. This is just Apple desperately playing catchup. About time on HomeKit and AirPlay getting into more products. They should have been doing this last year if not two years ago. But it seems that Cook under invests in so much. ( His moto should be "Go Small" ) This is news because it Apple putting their work on a Samsung Device (I guess this is what ThermoNuclear in the Cook age looks like)
I've decided that the existence of Alexa is good for Apple. Alexa in homes keeps the Google Assistant out until Apple finally ships a decent Siri on a reasonable HomePod
(HomePod 2.0 will come in the next year and be smaller and cheaper. Hopefully these TVs will be able to AirPlay to them).
Not an Apple ‘hater’ - I am a customer since before the Mac who never had to switch to Apple because I stuck it out. Been a shareholder since the time of the OS X Public Beta- when I saw the new OS I knew Apple had a bright future and started investing in stock. I am typing this on an iPad Pro with a series 4 Watch on my wrist and an iPhone X S on the table next to my chair. There is a Mac Pro and a new Mac mini at home along with the 4K Apple TV. I don’t think I qualify as an Apple hater but I think they are far from perfect, benign or as consumer friendly as they once were.
As to Microsoft, that company is now more valuable than Apple, as they should be, and is better run. Windows 10 Pro is by far the best version they have ever made- that is not true of the current mac OS. The Surface is a far better mobile device than the iPad Pro if you need a serious computing device and the variety of hardware available to run Windows is far superior to what Apple offers currently.
You wonder why Apple would license Airplay to the TV manufacturers? Because Apple is smart and knows that although millions own an Apple TV, a much larger market doesn't own the Apple TV, so they can keep selling the Apple TV for those who want a premium experience, but still offer multiple ways for folks to access their upcoming streaming services.
I don't think many reasoning people would think Apple offering a TV screen makes much sense. You may not believe TV's are low margin, commoditized products, but you might want to read the Vizio CEO's recent comments when he said it was an incredibly low margin business, about 6%, and that the only way they make it is by selling your personal information to advertisers and such. Why would Apple buy screens from LG and Samsung to make a TV set that is like everyone else's, just to jump into a hyper-competitive market that would drain huge resources to lose money when they can make large amounts of money selling Apple TV's and services on others sets?
Apple isn't going to do anything with a TV screen that Samsung and LG can and Apple would just be buying their screens. That's the problem, everyone has great screens. We've reached a point where they are a commoditized product with almost no profit margins. Again, look at what the Vizio CEO just admitted--it's a 6% margin industry and Vizio sets have got great reviews, but they are staying in business only because they can sell your information. It isn't like 15-20 years ago when people gladly paid a premium for a Sony screen as it was noticeably different.
I have a feelimg though though that if the analysts and WSJ were demanding that Apple open up then DED would be penning a polemic about why Apple would never do that, if he hasn’t already.
App store is likely biggest portion, but just about every category of service is exploding and dominating the industry- including Apple Music and Apple Pay, along with long time revenue producer iTunes.
Regards,
A long time WSJ and Bloomberg reader/user