AppleInsider Staff
As the tail end of Apple's quarterly conference call, Apple CEO Tim Cook threw out a somewhat surprising statistic, saying the company has sold some 20 million Apple TV units since the unit launched in 2007.
Answering a question from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster regarding Amazon's recent get of HBO content for Fire TV, Cook said Apple has now sold 20 million Apple TVs.
During Apple's February shareholder meeting, Cook said he would stop calling the product a "hobby" and the ballooning sales numbers are likely part of that decision.
"The reason that I stripped off the 'hobby label' is that when you look at the sales of the Apple TV box itself and you look at content that was bought directly off the Apple TV, for 2013 that number was over a billion dollars," Cook said. "So it didn't feel right to me to call something that's over a billion a 'hobby.'"
As for the content wars currently underway between Apple, Amazon and Google, Cook said he doesn't have a personal view as far as Amazon's latest announcement of HBO Go availability. He did note that Apple TV has long had HBO shows — since June 2013 — while Amazon is just now receiving "older content."
Amazon released its Fire TV set-top streamer earlier in April without HBO support, a glaring deficiency for many would-be buyers.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
24 Comments
pace seems to be about 6-7 millions per year.
Seems low since they claimed 1 billion of revenue from it last year alone. But that included revenue from content bought on the Apple TV afaik. They could sell about 5 times more with an App Store
App Store.....yes. I could watch the .99 cent movie of the week, Don Jon, and play Words With Friends simultaneously.
[quote name="asdasd" url="/t/178790/apple-announces-20m-apple-tvs-sold-since-debut#post_2521677"]Seems low since they claimed 1 billion of revenue from it last year alone. But that included revenue from content bought on the Apple TV afaik. They could sell about 5 times more with an App Store[/quote] 1) The numbers seem low for all the Apple TV models. Based on this Wikipedia page it looks closer to 30 million units if we assume the $1 billion in Apple TV revenue refers [U]only[/U] to unit sales, and not from revenue gained from giving others a "channel" on the Apple TV home page or any rentals and purchases that may have been through the device, which we both believe is not the case. [LIST] [*] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV#Sales [/LIST] 2) I agree that an App Store would be great but I think this not easy because there needs to be better HW and unification between the TV set/monitor as well as the controller. Until both of these are reasonably ironed out I think any App Store will be as "[I]Meh[/I]." as the current "channels" that annoyingly pop up every other week.
I bought an ATV for my 73 year-old mom. Completely tech-illiterate. She used to buy a couple DVD's every week at Costco. She has countless of viewed-once DVD's in her house. It's overwhelming. At first she was hesitant and didn't understand "renting/streaming" content from ATV without a physical DVD, but now she is hooked on renting movies on iTunes and Netflix.
So yes, perhaps 20 million units may seem low compared to Apple's other products, but people (like my mom) that wouldn't normally have any need for a PC, Apple is making a killing from her from iTunes. This is another gateway drug to get into people's homes.
ATV is an incredible device!