Earlier today, investor Carl Icahn published an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook in which he predicted that Apple would enter the television market with 55-inch and 65-inch UHD TVs. This evening, however, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple currently has no plans to enter the highly competitive TV market.
The report claims that Apple has began researching the possibility of entering the television market nearly 10 years ago, but has never been able to find a “breakthrough†feature that would set its offerings apart. Apple reportedly considered adding cameras to its TVs for FaceTime functionality. The company also looked into a variety of different display types, but ultimately decided that nothing it could create would be compelling enough to convince consumers to switch.
Apple, according to the report, dropped its plans to create a TV set more than a year ago. Apple, however, didn’t totally “kill†the television project. Instead, it disbanded the team and sent its members to various other product areas. Should someone at Apple have an idea on a breakthrough feature, there’s no inhibiting factor that would prevent it from rejuvenating its TV team.
Apple is still expected to introduce a new Apple TV set-top box in June with deeper Siri integration, third-party application support, a new TV streaming service, and a “fancier†remote control.
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Even the Remote App by Apple, which is very close to what you’re asking for, has serious drawbacks as a remote, the most obvious being the fact that at it’s best it’s slower and more cumbersome than any “normal†remote due to the fact that it has to sleep/wake and communicate across a network.
Aplle will use the set too Aplle TV box as an Airport base station, HomeKit hub, add games and right Siri integration and have a higher cost Aplle TV they will make more money on.
It shows they are not only passing up a good opportunity, but that they can’t “see†the problems with TV sets as they currently exist. So it’s not just a business decision type of mistake, it’s a “failure of vision†type mistake.
I think this is the kind of thing we can expect from Apple moving forward now however. I suppose everything has to end sometime.
Look at people paying $17k for a gold watch. With the regime iMac Apple went lux and went away from the average consumer. There is questions of if the rose gold iPhone 6s will be made of gold and other models have sapphire screens.
So it’s easy to see Apple releasing luxury television sets, they did bu a luxury TV maker the other year.