Apple sold $1.1 billion of Apple TVs in 2013 and is investing heavily in the next generation of products, CEO Tim Cook said at the company’s annual meeting on Friday.
However, the question is: will the new products include a new generation of Apple TVs? For the past few years, rumours about a “new Apple TV” were plenty including a complete TV set and, more recently, a set-top box that would include a (cable or IPTV) tuner, game integration, gesture control and more.
During the meeting, Cook said, “It’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days.” But even with a turnover of over one billion dollar, it is small beer compared to the company’s total of $171 billion in sales.
Still, the company until now sold more than 13 million units of its “hobby” product, compared with eight million for the competing Roku set-top.
Meanwhile, Apple has steadily been adding up content sources to its existing set-top (mainly in the US, see chart) including Netflix, but creating a hybrid box would make sense. This could include teaming up with cable, IPTV or DTH platforms.
