Advanced Television

Apple’s Cook: TV area of “intense interest”

May 30, 2012

By Colin Mann

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has confirmed that TV is an interesting area for the company, but remained coy on any detailed revelations as to timescales for launching a revised ‘Apple TV’ product.

Speaking at the All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Cook noted that the company had stayed in the Apple TV product business. “We’re not a hobby kind of company, as you know. Our tendency is to do very few things, put all of our wood behind a few arrows, and if something creeps in and isn’t a big success we get it out of the way and move on,” he told delegates.

He said Apple TV was not a fifth leg of the stool. “It’s not of the same market size of a phone business or the Mac business or the music business or the tablet business. It’s not like that. But last year we sold 2.8 million Apple TVs. This year, in the first six months, we’ve sold 2.7 [million].”

He suggested this was helped by 1080p and movies in the cloud. “And so this is an area of intense interest for us. Many of us, the TV that we do watch is almost exclusively on it. That’s what my TV watching is. All of my movies, everything, is coming through Apple TV,” he stated.

“So the customer satisfaction with that product is incredible. It’s off the charts. So we’re going to keep pulling this string and see where it takes us. I think many people would say, this is an area in their life that they’re not really pleased with,”he suggested.

“The whole TV experience. So it’s an interesting area. We’ll have to see what we do. Right now, our contribution is Apple TV. Here’s the way we’d look at it. Not just at this, but other areas. We’d look and ask, can we control the key technology? Can we make a significant contribution far beyond what others have done in this area? Can we make a product that we all want? We think we’re reasonable proxies for others. So those are things we’d ask about any new product category,” he revealed.

“This is sort of how we think. How we think about it, how we look at it. I love the product, but I think Apple TV is more something that you keep pulling the string to see where it goes,” he concluded.

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