In The News

Apple TV Upgrade: Upside Limited Without Content

September 07, 2015

Apple has been working for some time on a cable killer, and is looking to combine broadcast and select cable networks for a cheaper, better-looking bundle. But that isn’t the extent of the company’s content ambitions: As Variety reported exclusively, the company has even made overtures to execs in Hollywood about producing its own original programming, with the goal of building out a production unit that could one day churn out TV shows or even movies.

But no Apple originals are in the foreseeable future, and negotiations with networks to license channels have been slow-moving, forcing the company to postpone the launch of the service until some time in 2016.

Without that content infusion, Apple TV is just another box — and an expensive one: Numerous leaks point to a base model launch price of $149.

That’s significantly more than the competition, which already has been eating Apple’s lunch with cheap boxes and streaming sticks. Roku, whose entry-level devices retail for just $50, sold 34% of all streaming devices in the U.S. in 2014. Apple TV’s market share was just 13%, according to data from Parks Associates, which also has sales of Google’s Chromecast streaming stick and Amazon’s Fire TV devices surpassing those of Apple’s hockey puck.

Consumers are voting with their wallets, argued Parks Associates research director Barbara Kraus: “If I just want to stream, I can do that with a $35 stick.”

From the article "Apple TV Upgrade: Upside Limited Without Content" by Janko Roettgers.

Previously In The News

TV Everywhere Reaches 40% Of US Pay-TV Consumers

MUMBAI: Usage of authenticated video viewing, or TV Everywhere, reached 40% of US pay-TV consumers in 2015, up from 22% in 2013, according to new research from Parks Associates. The percentage of r...

Hulu Is Slowing, Hits 12 Million Subscribers Versus Netflix’s 81 Million

But growing membership is harder to keep up at the same clip for all streaming services, as more and more companies launch their own online platforms. As consumers shift more of their entertainment di...

Smart home devices have a big data problem, and it's growing

That trend, to start making customers pay to access data, dovetails with research found by Parks Associates earlier this year, which noted that new smart home security customers spend about $55, on av...

Cutting the cord: 59% of Americans have canceled cable TV, signaling the dominance of streaming giants Netflix, Hulu and Amazon

Netflix is also preparing to crackdown on illegal account sharing via new artificial intelligence software, which will be able to analyze which users are logged in and then flag shared accounts. Th...

‹
1
2
...
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
...
719
720
›