Is something happening with Apple? Sign of things to come?

[rocketpig]

HappySqurriel said:

rocketpig said:
BTW, it's pretty widely known that the next market Apple is going to attack is the burgeoning "connected TV" market. They're already leading the connected set top box market with Apple TV and Steve Jobs mentioned that he had "cracked the TV problem" shortly before he died and spent his last weeks working on a strategy how to move forward after he was gone.

At the same time, unlike the smart phone market the actual practical application of smart/connected TVs is almost non-existent beyond products like netflix ...

Think about it, you're sitting at home where you have a desktop or notebook computer, your smartphone is in your pocket and you (possibly) a tablet or LCD based ebook reader at hand what could Apple possibly offer through your TV that can not/is not offered on your game console, set-top box or media extender; or better delivered by one of the countless other devices you already have?

While almost everyone I know who owns a tablet has the same buyer’s remorse I have for (pretty much) the same reason, that it seems to be a device with compelling potential and no real use besides being an expensive portable media player/e-book reader, the connected TV doesn’t have this potential any more than a connected dishwasher does. And no matter how many iterations Apple will go through with Apple TV it will never be successful.

Apple will sell 4 million Apple TVs in 2011. At this point, they continue to call the project a "hobby".

That is one hell of a hobby. If you don't see the market potential for connected televisions done well, you're not really paying attention. Why do you think Microsoft entered the game market? It's the future of television once someone figures out how to break the back of networks and cable companies, gets them to play ball, and brings them in line with what the consumer of the future will demand. If anyone can figure out a way to do it, it's probably Apple (even though their methodology will probably be Draconian in nature and will stifle future competition). While you say "only Netflix", I see that as the future of television. More things will move to on-demand. Hulu and Netflix will continue to gain traction. Pay channels like HBO will start to allow people to subscribe over the Internet without a cable connection. At that point, set top boxes start to fight for space with cable boxes in the home market. That's where we're heading. It's a relatively small market now but it won't always be that way.

You may regret your tablet purchase but I don't. None of my friends do, either. And the ones who don't have one are deciding which one to buy. In time, the tablet market will start eating into the laptop market, just as the laptop market ate into the desktop market a few years ago.