Apple CEO Tim Cook has suggested the technology company might further develop its TV product, taking it beyond the hobby stage.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference, Cook said the existing Apple TV product had sold just shy of 3 million units in the past year with 1.4 million purchased in the last quarter.
“It’s clearly ramping, but the reality – the reason we call it a hobby – we don’t want to send a message to our shareholders that we think the market for it is the size of our other businesses. The Mac, the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone. We don’t want to send a signal that we think the length of that stool is equal to the others.
“We believe in focus and only working on a few things. So, with Apple TV however, despite the barriers in that market, for those of us who use it, we’ve always thought there was something there. If we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, we might find something that was larger. For those people that have it right now, the customer satisfaction is off the chart. We need something that could go more main-market for it to be a serious category,” added Cook.
In recent months there have been suggestions that Apple might look to take on Google with a full-blown TV product. Already broadcasters including the BBC, Sky, RTE and RTL are using Apple’s AirPlay technology to stream their catch up content from the iPad to the existing Apple TV.
Cook was interviewed by Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope and the interview originally transcribed by the MacRumours website.
