Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Apple TV Upgrade: Upside Limited Without Content

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

One Of The Best Investments Today In The $1 Trillion IoT Market

But Money Morning Director of Tech & Venture Capital Michael A. Robinson says that when you add in the applications of the healthcare and medical fields, you can add another $2 trillion to the market'...

Extra Miles For Fitness Trackers

Marketing for RecycleHealth got an unexpected boost from an applicant to the digital health communication certificate program, who volunteered her design skills and did a photo shoot of donated device...

71% Of Us Don't Want A Fixer-Upper Home, Survey Says

Most house hunters apparently don't want to bargain hunt the old-fashioned way. Fixer-uppers may be out of fashion. A survey of 1,250 U.S. adults this summer from Coldwell Banker Real Estate and Pa...

Connected health: what’s different than last year?

This Editor was interested in what the organizers of the annual Connected Health Summit, now taking place in San Diego, are seeing as the differences in the digital health and remote monitoring sector...