Must-Read: Steve Jobs (2010): Apple and the TV Market
Must-Read: The standard story of Christensenian disruption is that there is a niche large enough to allow for economies of scale and for learning by doing but too small for incumbents to focus on serving–and then the disruptive technology eats the rest of the industry alive as it rides down the learning curve while incumbents cannot find a way to compete because cannibalizing their existing markets is not something their organizations can actually plan and do. The problem with the TV is that there does not seem to be any such niche as long as cable providers bundle the set-top box. Therefore either the FTC has to intervene and force unbundling, or Apple has to hope there are enough fanboys who will buy anything it makes to get them over the hump. It will be interesting to watch:
(2010): Apple and the TV Market: “The television industry… has a subsidized… model…
…that gives everybody a set-top box for… $10 a month… [so] nobody is willing to buy a set top box. Ask TiVo, ask ReplayTV, you know. Ask Roku, ask Vudu, ask us, ask Google in a few months…. Sony has tried as well, Panasonic has tried, a lot of people have tried and they’ve all failed…. You can say ‘well, gosh… I’ll just add another little box with another one!’… [and] end up with a table full of remotes, cluster full of boxes, bunch of different UIs…. The only way that’s ever going to change is if you… redesign [the set-top box] from scratch with a consistent UI… and get it to the consumer in a way that they’re willing to pay for it. And right now there is now way to do that…