There's simply no reason for Apple to jump into the crowded low-margin battlefield of smart TVs when it can sell its hardware at gross margins exceeding 40%. Steve Jobs reportedly once told employees, "TV is a terrible business. They don't turn over and the margins suck."
Perhaps Icahn will argue that Apple's brand appeal could convince people to buy $1,500 4K TVs. But in my opinion, TVs don't belong in the same category as smartphones or tablets. Plunging prices across the market indicate that customers favor big screens with low price tags, and the upgrade cycle for TVs is much longer than the one for smartphones and tablets.
In addition, Apple already has a decent foothold in the connected TV market with Apple TV, which accounted for 17% of all streaming media devices in the U.S. last year, according to Parks Associates. That makes it a decent platform for delivering iTunes, its upcoming streaming TV service, and other digital content to customers.
From the article "Why I'm Glad Apple Inc. Killed Its Smart TV Plans" by Leo Sun.
Digital TV-video viewing continues to climb -- but it's still way behind traditional TV consumption. Parks Associates says U.S. broadband households spend on average 1.3 hours per week watching...
As this litte blurbette points out, broadband households spend about 1.3 hours per week watching video on a tablet and 1.6 hours watching on a smartphone, but that’s compared to “almost 20 hours pe...
But also, Parks Associates also reports this week that 46% of all broadband households also have a game console connected to the Internet and 28% use it as their primary connected device. And of th...
Really serious hiding-under-a-rock just kills me. So when I read an account of the CableFax Innovation Summit that happened a few weeks ago, I had the same surprised reaction. At this meeting of se...
