re aTV
Without the content, it was hard to see the market. With the content, who knows. I kinda think Apple would have a better shot combining the aTV with the Time Capsule product, so it would get the movie-viewing platform into more households. As it is, you really have to want to put this stuff into your home entertainment center in order to buy it.
I was sure surprised at the scale of Apple's music business, so I won't pretend to have the real pulse of content buyers, and I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised about movie-related sales. The fact that folks are selling BluRay with made-for-iPod content on them, and Apple has tech for borrowing other computers' optical media readers, show an interesting path forward for aTV and related content.
I think the kicker is this: if a household sets up an account with a credit card and a movie player, folks will get into the habit of clicking for a download. I saw a specimen of this myself. I gave a teen an iTS gift card for XMas and, although she had been given a DVD of a movie she wanted to own, she wasn't willing to jump through the hoops to encode the DVD for use on her iPod, and thus spent iTS gift card credit on the exact same movie in order to get it on her iPod. I think teens will drive a lot of sales in this space in households that set it up. The question remains: what can Apple to do increase the likelihood of someone actually setting it up in their household?
And that, I dunno. Is $229 cheap enough? Will access to HD content mean as much, now that the BluRay/HD-DVD conflict appears over? Is it just too late?
On the other hand, CPU sales share and growing relevance in the handheld device market promise some interesting future news.
Hmm. Does Apple have worldwide availability on the movie rentals? Do HD-DVD and BluRay have the equivalent of DVD region codes? Interesting stuff.
Take care,
--Tex.
