back to article No longer a 'hobby', Apple TV rakes in ONE BEEELLION DOLLARS

At Apple's shareholder meeting at the end of this February, CEO Time Cook removed the qualifier of "hobby" from the Apple TV, and during a conference call after releasing his company's financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2014, he explained why: money. Apple TV Cupertino's billion-dollar squared-off hockey …

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  1. S 11
    Go

    Good for you Apple. You need this.

  2. hypernovasoftware

    We don't need no stinking Apple Television...

    What we need (and I hope we get someday) is an Apple TV that has the content I want (including the missing live new and sports) in a cafeteria style format and that has a fine tuned interface that allows for smooth forward and reverse viewing, pause and DVR style recording capabilities.

    Plenty of companies make great televisions but nobody makes a decent interface to content.

    1. Sean O'Connor 1

      Re: We don't need no stinking Apple Television...

      I am looking forward to the day when the baby sitter comes over and I don't need to spend time explaining how my god-awful collection of remote controls needs to be manipulated just to watch telly or a DVD.

  3. Jim84

    Holo TV

    Apple should just buy Seereal technologies patents, bring out a pseudo holographic Television set. Bring out a few iPad games that can use it, as well as a similar screen on the iPhone, then make money of licencing the tech to all other TV makers.

    I'm dreaming of course, but it would be nice if they did.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Instead

    Whats wrong with £ 30 Chromecast?

    Oh sorry, thats Android and taboo! Yet still a streamer only.

    1. Mike Bell

      Re: Instead

      Chromecast is £30 for a reason.

      With just about every Google offering, you are the product. Look forward to a life of blipverts..

      1. Longrod_von_Hugendong
        Thumb Up

        Re: Instead

        blipverts - fantastic!! Large thumbs up for that one

      2. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Instead

        blipverts

        Upvote here as well.

        Haven't heard that one in ages. Excellent reference and context.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Instead

      There's nothing wrong with Chromecast, it's a similar approach to a different problem. If it gains traction, and this is likely because it's a damn sight easier to use than most SmartTV interfaces, then it's likely to be able to offer the same kind of content that Apple TV does.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Instead

      Whats wrong with £ 30 Chromecast?

      Oh sorry, thats Android and taboo! Yet still a streamer only.

      Apple TV is on to its third generation... Chromecast has been out five minutes. It could yet go the way of Android TV, Nexus Q and whatever other half assed products Google saw fit to try and shoehorn Android into and released halfbaked only to can a few months later. You can get away with releasing beta products when it is free software services, but not when someone has paid for it

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm...

    So 90 quid, plus some more for a HDMI cable, gives me access to Apple's TV store

    or 10 quid (which includes a HDMI cable) gives me a NowTV box and then I buy access packs to get what I want. Oh and it has the usual OnDemand services that you've come to expect.

    surprised Apple haven't sued Sky (and Roku) for making something that looks like an Apple product.

  6. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Who's making the money?

    So, in stark contrast to most Apple products, Apple TV is sold at slightly above cost to encourage people to buy content from the store. It fits in neatly to an existing Apple ecosystem and, even if it ignores standard NAS (DNLA), people are generally happy with it providing a better interface than most builtins.

    But of that USD 1 billion sold via the Apple store, how much is Apple raking in? 33 % isn't bad but there's still a lot of infrastructure to pay for (whereas as content owners can just count the cash) and the recent noises from the FCC about dropping net neutrality is as likely to hurt Apple as much as Netflix. What Netflix, and Amazon and to a lesser extent Google have, are increasing amounts of their own content. That might be decisive over the next couple of years.

  7. Grikath
    WTF?

    something tells me..

    mr Cook is telling porkers.

    If 20 million boxes have found a home, to get to a billion in even the grossest of gross income each box must have somehow generated $50 million ....

    Apple products may be grossly overpriced, their fanbase quite rabid, and there will probably be parallel streams of revenue tied to the boxes, but I find this somewhat hard to swallow.

    Then again, Great Finance seems to have its' own rules.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: something tells me..

      Er, have you divided 1 billion by 20 million lately?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: something tells me..

        So he got it wrong.

        I make 1 Billion (1,000 Million) divided by 20 Mill the grand total of $50 per box in the year... is that really that impressive considering the cost of a cable subscription in the US or the UK

        1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

          Re: something tells me..

          UK billion vs US billion (which is a milliard, or short billion).

          We even speak mathematics differently...

          1. jonathanb Silver badge

            Re: something tells me..

            A UK Billion is 1000 million, the same as in the US.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: something tells me..

              No.. A 1000 million is traditionally a Milliard here in the UK with a million million being a billion. However the US billion now seems to have become the accepted norm.

    2. Cesar _

      Re: something tells me..

      Erm, $1 billion divided by 20 million is $50.

      Even using the rules of Great Finance.

  8. JassMan
    Trollface

    Amazed its not called an iTV

    then Cook could sue the arse off ITV plc for trademark infringement. Then he could control how and where the content is made. The mere fact that ITV plc. has owned the name since 1955 should be no obstacle to the fruity firms fantastic lawyers. History has shown that prior art has no bearing on the outcome of cases involving Apple.

    1. Ivan Headache

      Re: Amazed its not called an iTV

      I'm amazed I haven't heared anyone mention this before.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Ivan Headache

    http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/hearing-aids/buying-guide.htm

  10. Matthew 17

    Cook's gone down in my estimation

    He used 'off of' instead of 'from'.

    Bad Cook, go and sit in the corner!!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Media Streamers

    Alas, 'smart TVs' seem to not live up to their name, and the Apple TV might end up plugging the gap - alongside the Roku and companions.

    My recent Samsung 3D tv, despite the array of apps and its awful DLNA streaming capability, is incapable of streaming pictures and other content from my Mac Pro which is on the same hard-wired high-speed network in my house.

    I have tried a number of media streaming apps on the Mac, the latest being Plex. A couple of these have looked very promising - XBMC looked great on the TV, but rendered by iPhoto images in horrible low def format and took over the Mac in ways I wasn't comfortable with. Plex looked even more promising as a media server, but I found serves up blank images from my iPhoto library. I strongly suspect some transcoding nastiness going on here.

    http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/335/how-can-i-make-my-mac-a-dlna-server-and-or-client

    Regrettably I have found myself tempted to try an Apple TV, as I suspect that given Samsung's dodgy software this may turn out to be the only reliable way to get high def media streamed from my Mac.

    1. Lallabalalla
      Gimp

      Re: Media Streamers

      I've been thinking the same thing. £99 is a small price to pay for *not* having to dick around with 3rd party software that doesn't really work anyway, after a lot of effort on my part that I would rather put into opening a beer or walking the dog with the kids.

      But now, the thing that's stopping me is that since getting what sounds like the same TV as you have, the kids discovered the BlinkBox app there on the app screen, and they have everything we have wanted to watch (so far) at half the price of anything from Apple. So what with the catch-up apps there on the same screen, I have to wonder what's the point?

      I could look at my own photos and videos, I guess. But so far far we've been quite happy to sit round the iMac for that - the 21.5" screen is nice enough. I'd have a TV box as a present though...but it could really do with decent PVR controls. I gather they're a bit basic atm.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Media Streamers

      I was about to buy a Samsung 8505 Plasma.

      (I know, old tech, not 4K, no DMI 2.0 and so on ... but the picture is as good as it gets for the price and resolution)

      I have not had the opportunity (obviously) to test streaming. Streaming from the Mac is also on the list of things I want to be able to do - are you telling me that i need to spend the 99 bucks and save myself grief?

  12. tommydokc

    apple tv is a joke.

    i've tried chromecast, appletv and roku. the winner by far IMHO and not even close is the roku. the other two cannot even compare. I started out with appletv... took it back and tried the google dongle.. took it back and the roku is still streaming away. i don't see it changing anytime soon either. anyone who says otherwise is talking foolishly and have never actually used all or at the very least any of them or apparently all they really want access to is netflix.

  13. Wanderingone56ish

    I already have an Apple tv. It's a Mac Mini hooked to my television.

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