Apple TV Sales Below Expectations

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According to research firm Forrester, Apple TV sales are way below expectations and they blame the iTunes “video revolution” that never happened for the shortfall.

Forrester predicted in May that Apple would sell 1 million Apple TVs by year end, counting largely on the Apple faithful to purchase the device. That is not the case anymore.
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The industry kills me...I'm not one to defend Apple but...


ANALYST EXPECT (but were way off) so THE COMPANY suffers. It's this way with all companies so I shouldn't be surprised, but still.
 
I thought the apple t.v. bombed. I remember reading about it a long time ago and then nothing. From what I remember it wasn't anything special. Just another over priced item with an apple logo.
 
Out of the box it is wayyy to crippled.. that stock 40gb is an absolute joke.
 
Ha... Apple TV sales weren't way below *my* expectations (nor probably anyone on this forum).

The thing was practically feature-less. It's biggest features were "small" and "has Apple logo".
 
For 90% of it's life, the only content you could buy for it in the UK is crappy music videos ( and seriously - who watches those ). Now, you can buy over-priced tv shows at lower quality than DVD. What's the point?

Doug
 
DRM laden nodef video is not appealing on a modern large screen. Lack of real DVR support is also a negative. $1.99 per episode when everyone else gets it for "free" over cable? Even Mac users are not going to fall for that.

Windows Media Center + XBOX 360 FTMFW, ladies.
 
I can get a laptop from Dell that does 10 times more then an Apple TV for a similar price. Why would anyone (other then the zealots) ever buy one?
 
Maybe if it sucked a little less, it would sell. The Apple TV has got three major flaws:

1) It is too expensive. A Dell laptop is $100 more, and a Mac Mini is $200 more.
2) It doesn't support mainstream codecs. Face it: people want a device like this so they can easily watch their pirated movies on their TV, and what codec are all pirated movies in? That's right: XviD.
3) It won't play ripped DVDs. People don't want to have to convert their library with something like Handbrake just to import it into iTunes/Apple TV. They want to rip and be watching in less than 10 minutes.
 
The video quality was like youtube. People tolerate crappy video on youtube because it's free and there's a lot of err.. special content on youtube that you can't get elsewhere. I don't know what they were thinking. Apple wants people to pay for their hardware, then buy their crappy encodes that are worse than the free stuff out there? Good plan.
 
I'd buy the little box if Apple had $2.00 rentals for movies. Just to be able to say, "hey I wanna watch this movie," and boom here it comes.

Buying iTunes movies for $10 is dumb... but a rental makes more sense as a temporary, digital download. Sometimes I just wanna SEE a movie... not buy it. That's why video stores are still in business!
 
So, since Forrester was wrong on their prediction from May, why should we believe this prediction?
Forrester: The market analysis firm *not* to hire.
 
Maybe if they offered an $1895.00 laptop feature……For the zealots of course:rolleyes:
 
According to its research, Forrester said that nearly half of all online adults say they have heard of the Apple TV.
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What a load of crap. I could ask ten random people if they've heard of that and I'd be lucky to grab one who has. I recognized it after seeing it again but if asked out of the blue if I knew anything about it I'd say "no".
 
It is crippled. I think Apple overall makes great products (and me tons of money, go Apple stock!), but the AppleTV is a bit of a bust unless they add more codec support, movie rentals, and IPTV/DVR support (that would be awesome).
 
MH Knights said:
Many Apple fans simply bought a Mac Mini and turned it into a media hub.
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Exactly.
I used an Apple TV at a party last year and then *had* to have one for the interface... until I did some research, compared it against a Mini and decided I wanted more control and features than it could offer. My Mini wears many hats: Fileserver, HTPC, XP machine (vmware fusion), BT seed box. Guess how much of that I wouldn't have been able to do with an AppleTV?
 
thing is, i doubt they will ever add more codec support. look at the ipod line, they still only play the codecs no one in the world uses.
 
It was another stupid Jobs idea with a Jobs price like the Hi-Fi.

I dont know why anyone without a disposable income would buy that piece of crap. No DVR was the killer, why it didnt have something so super simple and cheap as a DVR is mind boggling. If it had a DVR it would have sold enough to keep it afloat.
 
Martyr said:
thing is, i doubt they will ever add more codec support. look at the ipod line, they still only play the codecs no one in the world uses.
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It plays all the codecs that the iTunes store uses. If you think others being omitted was unintentional, think again. ;) It's by design, to keep iTunes store sales high, and keep the media companies off Apple's back for "supporting the pirate's preferred codec."
 
Serpico said:
It is crippled. I think Apple overall makes great products (and me tons of money, go Apple stock!), but the AppleTV is a bit of a bust unless they add more codec support, movie rentals, and IPTV/DVR support (that would be awesome).
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Agreed. Full HD support would be good too. The AppleTV is just too limited in scope to be a successful product; if they had added the right features, I'd have snapped one up in a heartbeat.

I bought a D-Link DSM-520 to do what the AppleTV only wishes it could do. The box supports DivX and XVid, plus a bunch of other formats (only limits I know are H.264 and Quicktime; at this point, I don't need them for what I do), even straight .VOB files. It also supports a ton of audio and picture formats. It does wired or wireless networking, and it has component and HDMI outs. It supports up to 1080i playback; I haven't gone that high, but I've played back some 720p over the wireless from one of my systems to my 42" plasma, and it works great. D-Link's new Active TV functions (when they mature; I still think they have a few minor bugs to sort out) are kind of a cool add-on feature as well.

The box isn't perfect, but it was a lot cheaper than buying a Media Center PC, and unlike a lot of media extenders, doesn't require me to run Windows MCE of some sort.
 
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