Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook is still keeping quite about any plans the company may have to expand into the television sector. In what CNET’s Donna Tam is calling a “bit of Déjà vu,” Cook explained that the company as of yet had no concrete plans to do so when questioned during Wednesday’s disappointing earnings call by Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster.
Claiming that he recognized that there’s a lot Apple could do to revolutionize the space, Cook said “There’s a lot we can contribute in this space so we can continue to pull the string see where it leads us,” as everyone else took note that Apple (AAPL) sold 2 million Apple TV devices. 1.4 million units were sold in the same period last year. In October, the company stated that it sold 5.3 million set top boxes in 2012.
Cook also noted that those metrics pointed to success, as the device is favored by a small niche of people that is growing—but it seems that investors are growing frustrated with the tech giant (AAPL) not having a large scale innovative product to offer to the public within a well-outlined timeframe. And there is clearly a growing demand for a product that can replace aging satellite and cable delivery systems as “real TV.”
Cook’s vagueness on the development of a product that handles video in a way that is larger in scope than the current Apple TV product is telling—as it’s quite similar to the information he related last year, as Gene Munster has already noted.
Previous hints Cook made a hint at a possible Apple (AAPL) built television were made in December during an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams are all the more telling. Cook noted then that he couldn’t say anything more than that it was “an area of intense interest” and “I feel like I’ve stepped back in time 20 to 30 years.” Apple wants this market, but it can’t say when it could potentially grab it.
Content is clearly an issue, but the decline in earnings the providers are generating clearly shows that they’ll have to strike a new deal sometime if they want to stay afloat in any meaningful capacity. So content, it seems, is merely a question of opportunity and time.
But to me at least, it seems that vague “maybe somewhere down the road” sentiment Cook seems to be conveying were connected to inability to get these camps on board, it would be easier to come out and say so.
To me this points to another general possibility, Apple (AAPL) is still working on getting the logistics of getting large panel retina displays rolled out at rate fast enough to meet high demand for a revolutionary product before markets could have a chance to duplicate it. If the firm is still addressing supply constraints for the redesign on iMac, it’s fair to say that a revolutionary device with a large display is still probably at least a year off. Let’s hope that production houses used to delivering content via cable and satellite continue to hurt for profit in the meantime.
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