Apple has announced that it expects sales of its new Apple TV to top one million units later this week.
The news comes head on the heels of reports that Google TV has asked consumer electronics manufacturers to hold back their models during January’s CES in Las Vegas.
According to Apple, iTunes users are now renting and purchasing over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies per day. These figures, of course, include all users of the iTunes sgtore not just Apple TV owners.
Apple TV also stream content from Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, and MobileMe. All this “for the breakthrough price of just $99”, in sharp contrast to the much higher priced Google TV devices.
Apple has also announced that the Mac App Store will open for business on Thursday, January 6. The store will be available in 90 countries at launch and will feature paid and free apps in categories like education, games, graphics and design, lifestyle, productivity, and utilities. This should also include a number of apps for Apple TV.
Meanwhile, Roku, the manufacturers of another set-top box that streams web videos to the TV, claimed it is also close to reaching sales of 1 million units. According to the company, sales of the device have doubled since Apple TV came on the market three months ago.
