Roger Fingas
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn argued in a Tuesday TV interview on Tuesday that Apple will indeed make and sell a television set, despite a new report claiming that the company abandoned the project over a year ago.
Referring to TheWall Street Journal's story, Icahn told CNBC's Halftime Report that despite having read it he doesn't "even know what it says," insisting that the report was "ridiculous" with a "relatively misleading" headline.
"I'm not backtracking in anyway. I believe they [Apple] will do a TV. That's my belief," he asserted.
On Monday, Icahn issued an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, suggesting that the company should already have a $240 share price and market capitalization near $1.4 trillion. The same letter also proposed that Apple will launch a TV next year, and a car in 2020.
Rumors of an Apple television persisted for years, but petered out some time ago, leaving Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster as one of the few people backing the idea. Earlier today, Munster issued a memo saying he no longer expects the product.
Instead of a full-scale TV, Apple is though to be throwing its weight behind a revamped Apple TV set-top that should be announced at June's Worldwide Developers Conference. It's expected to have support for Siri and an App Store, and feature hardware upgrades such as an A8 processor, a touchpad remote, and greater internal storage.
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33 Comments
Picking up the banner from Gene, huh? Crazy Carl...
TV market is a low profit business being dragged down by the flood of cheap Chinese brands. Even Apple would have a hard time selling high end TVs dominated by Samsung, LG, Sony. Integrating Apple TV into high end brands is an option, similar to Carplay.
Picking up the banner from Gene, huh? Crazy Carl...
Considering the only comments that ever came out of Apple were from Steve and his comment to Isaacson was very vague, I think there has never really been a definitive go-to-market strategy for Apple regarding a TV. That they haven't yet offered one indicates to me that the closest thing to an Apple Television will continue to be the iMac.
Incidentally, I'd love if Apple had a build-to-order option that included a digital TV signal card and built-in DVR functionality for the iMac, but I doubt I'll ever see that.
I've always thought "There just couldn't be a single person who actually thought that Apple could make money long-term with an actual TV set (or even think it is a good idea to get in that market)"... Guess I was wrong.
The tv ship has sailed... Why even have branded tv when the potential of AppleTV is not even realized? Where are the apple tv video games?