Apple iTV, later renamed AppleTV, was first boasted as the missing piece of the puzzle, as the one thing that would tie everything together. AppleTV would make life make sense again. Jobs really opened up his whole supply of superlatives when describing the small and very appealing little box that seemed so promising. However it seems that the AppleTV has been far from the huge hit Apple was anticipating. According to a recent article in/at Forbes, it seems the AppleTV is about to disappear. Apple representatives have been very unwilling to answer any questions related to the sales of AppleTV and when Jobs was asked about the touted TV-box back in May he simply replied by calling it a hobby.
What could’ve caused this total flop? Well one reason could be the fact that everything has to go through iTunes. No web videos a la YouTube were possible. Another could be the almost total lack of support from the larger TV networks in America. 20th Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros. and Sony all refused to accept Apple’s (read Jobs’) low-low prices. AppleTV is believed to have sold 250,000 units so far, which has yielded Apple very little, if any, real income.
Then we have the price of the product which has certainly played its role too. The AppleTV sports quite mediocre hardware (ol’ left-over Intel chips) and limited storage capacity (40 GB), but still left a tiny ~20 % margin for Apple to work with. Apple usually has quite big margins (up to 40 %) with its products, but that was not the case with AppleTV. When you then bring up the fact that the competition offers more features and better hardware, AppleTV never really had a chance.
It’s a shame because the product did have a future, but Apple made a few wrong turns here and there, but as always one can’t complain about the design;
