Apple won’t make the TV unless it will be disruptive enough to either make acceptable margins on its own….or lead to content or integrated services that builds and protects the ecosystem. Cloud, concept, content, consolidation.
Q: Looking at the living room, you’ve said Apple TV is still on the hobby stage. What has the challenges been saying it’s on the hobby stage or going into the future?
TC: In terms of existing product, we sold just shy of 3 million Apple TVs in the past year. It’s very cool product and I can’t live without it. We sold 1.4 million last quarter. It’s clearly ramping, but the reality—the reason we call it a hobby—we don’t want to send a message to our shareholders that we think the market for it is the size of our other businesses. The Mac, the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone. We don’t want to send a signal that we think the length of that stool is equal to the others. That’s why we call it a hobby.
Apple doesn’t do hobbies as a general rule. We believe in focus and only working on a few things. So, with Apple TV however, despite the barriers in that market, for those of us who use it, we’ve always thought there was something there. If we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, we might find something that was larger. For those people that have it right now, the customer satisfaction is off the chart. We need something that could go more main-market for it to be a serious category.
If you don’t have one, you should get one because it’s a really cool product.
The release of Mountain Lion Beta and iOS features such as AirPlay made me realize that Apple may doing something unique for a future iTV.
Once everyone starts to get used to iOS in all Apple products, what keep Apple from just releasing a 42” or 50” iMac which is really an iTV.
We will not get a new product but rather a Mac that can do much more. Everyone will be used to the UI and voice commands that it becomes very natural. You don’t need a new TV just upgrade your next Mac to being a TV.
The compelling reason for the Apple TV brick to be incorporated into a full TV is to support voice and gesture input without the separate sensor bars Wii and Kinect have (making them early adopter,Heathkit ish products). If you can see and hear the TV properly, it can see and hear you. Combine that with a new generation of screen, a user-centric content delivery service, and Airplay, and you’ve got a TV that makes all the others look obsolete.
The release of Mountain Lion Beta and iOS features such as AirPlay made me realize that Apple may doing something unique for a future iTV.
Once everyone starts to get used to iOS in all Apple products, what keep Apple from just releasing a 42” or 50” iMac which is really an iTV.
We will not get a new product but rather a Mac that can do much more. Everyone will be used to the UI and voice commands that it becomes very natural. You don’t need a new TV just upgrade your next Mac to being a TV.
Due to the iMacs very high resolution screens, high cost CPU, hard drives etc, I think the cost would be rather prohibitive compared to current premium end HDTVs? I would buy one though sponge!
In my opinion, I think an apple HDTV would cost just a little more than current HDTVs, but would have a much better value proposition. It will both be postioned as a device that is capable of replacing multiple current devices (TV/Game Console/Cable Box/DVD player), and as a device that has unique exclusive features unavailable on any other TV (Siri, Airplay, iOS apps, “mystery features”).
I trust apple to be able to sell the value of the apple HDTV with a epic product intro event and typically great marketing.
In the first 12 months, selling 10 million units with an ASP of $1000+ at a 40%+ GM (good for an additional $4.00+ per share in EPS.), should be easy.
becuase its a new product, apple can happily pre-announce this early at WWDC in June (for developers to start working on games/apps for it) for a 3rd or 4th quarter release - those few months between announcement & release would be very painful for other TV manufacturers, as everyone waits for apples release.
Apple Insider and other sites are running rumors about AppleTV refresh. This morning my Wii announced the availability of Hulu Plus. I know about Hulu but never got on board. $7.99/month in the U.S. only. Can we put the two together and expect to see Hulu added to Netflix with a software/hardware refresh?
At the Kameyama No. 2 Plant, we are advancing a shift to mobile LCDs through the introduction of IGZO technology. The mass production and shipment of LCD panels using this technology was delayed from the initial schedule, but it is now planned that shipments will begin from February 2012. We will also expand the use of IGZO LCDs from tablet terminals to applications with larger screen sizes, such as high-resolution LCD monitors. We believe that we will be able to improve profitability by steadily advancing this transition.
External sales of LCDs manufactured at the Sakai Plant were sluggish due to the worsening of the global supply/demand environment. For this reason, from now on we will concentrate almost completely on internal demand for production of LCDs for TVs. We also plan to lower utilization of the Sakai Plant to around 50% in order to achieve appropriate inventory levels.
Also, with the expansion of applications for IGZO LCDs to notebook PCs and high-resolution monitors, we can expect the growth of business for these products. We will therefore take the opportunity of the reduced production to consider the introduction of IGZO technology to some of the production lines at the Sakai Plant.
Sharp is contemplating using the lull in production as an opportunity to reconfigure the Osaka factory to make panels with better features like higher resolutions and power-saving functions, the newspaper said.
So it appears that Apple will have access to 32,000 substrates.
Each sheet has enough space for 18 screens in the 40-inch size or 8 screens in the 60-inch size, and two sheets are sandwiched together in each finished screen. The plant is capable of making around 324,000 finished LCD panels per month for 40-inch LCD-TVs or 144,000 panels for 60-inch LCD-TV sets.
Of course if they need more panels they can always rely on their old friend CMI as it appears that Sharp and CMI have a joint venture for LCD panel production.
Apple knows it has a huge hit on their hands with AirPlay mirroring. Zero-config, dongle-free (from Apple, imagine that), ANYONE can do it from millions of Macs or soon hundreds of millions of iOS devices.. Supreme simplicity will disrupt the television world like you’ve never seen. Add Apple TV to my must-buy list if it launches this year.
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