The idea that Apple was going to manufacture their own brand of television harkens back to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Even Apple-branded-television champion Gene Munster abandoned that idea sometime last year.
Robert X. Cringely rightly points out that TVs have long been commoditized. Instead of TVs themselves:
The technical area I think Apple wants to dominate is High Dynamic Range (HDR) video — technology for making displays of all types brighter and display more colors. Right now there are two major video advances entering the market — 4K and HDR — and tests show HDR is a much more obvious improvement than 4K for viewers.
And:
Apple could be preparing its own 4K HDR OLED TV for sale but I don’t think so. A better move for Apple would be to take command of the whole HDR video wave by acquiring a dominant position in HDR intellectual property. That way every new TV from any manufacturer would have to license IP from Apple in order to be attractive to buyers.
And:
By controlling HDR Apple could come to control the entire video ecosystem. And the best way for Apple to control HDR would be by acquiring Dolby Labs.
Cringely’s article walks you through the technology behind (perhaps) the next wave of consumer TV purchases. There’s both futurism and history, lot’s of interesting bits to chew on. Definitely interesting, all the way through.
Note that when Cringely has made predictions before about Apple he’s been wrong, oh, about 100% of the time.
For some bizarre reason lots of people (well, at least a few dozen) eat it up and think his “insights” about Apple are “brilliant,” even after they’ve been shown to all be wrong. (It’s like they don’t know that they’re participating in a comment section on the Internet, or something…)
On this particular article, a commenter with a lot more domain knowledge than him has already refuted the vast majority of his assertions.
So TV is a commodity business, and MP3 Player, Smartphone, PC are not?
And if TV has a slow replacement cycle then Mac Pro, Airport, or Mac Mini don’t have slow cycle?
The commoditization of TV sales has been going on since the 1970s. It’s worse today. That’s why Munster’s predictions rang hollow.
I don’t think it’s more complicated than…
1) There’s no way to meaningfully differentiate a TV if you aren’t making the tech or owning the manufacturing process.
2) They can differentiate easily and quickly through things they control – an AppleTV box, services, deals w. studios, and integration with their product family.
3) The recurring $$$ they can make from a service usable on potentially all TVs is much greater than having 10-15% of the market and creating an ‘Apple vs World’ enviro. And servicing the little box is much easier than a big TV.
That said, I wish they would make a TV. They should just think of it as a really big peripheral for the AppleTV box. Call it Magic Screen.
I kind of wish Apple had a monitor lineup (I mean, better than simply the Thunderbolt display)… Just imagine a 50 inch Macbook like display floating on the wall (insert dreamy face emoji here)
As I type this, Dolby Labs’ (DLB) market cap is $3.71B.
Not exactly lunch money, but Apple could easily afford it.
To put this in perspective, remember how much Microsoft paid for Skype? That’s right. $8.5B.
“A better move for Apple would be to take command of the whole HDR video wave by acquiring a dominant position in HDR intellectual property.”
Bingo. Apple is already preparing the foundation for its next evolution. Analysts wring their hands over the fact that Apple makes most of their money from hardware. And as we all know, hardware gets cheaper and cheaper over the decades.
By owning intellectual property for future computing, communication, and entertainment technologies, Apple can build revenue streams without the need for periodic smash-hit hardware products. The TV industry could eventually make more money for Apple than iPhone makes at the moment.
Most PCs get replaced every 4 years at the very most. Even if Macs get stretched out some because they last longer, that’s probably every 5-6 years at most – but less for people who want a cutting-edge machine, of course.
Most people probably replace TVs every 10-15 years. I’m sure some people are always on the cutting edge, but I don’t foresee most people replacing all their TVs again soon. The previous upgrade to HD will probably last a long time.