Apple iTV: a hint as to why it was pre-announced so early

Posted Oct 19th 2006 11:54AM by Tobias Buckell
Filed under: Products and Services, Competitive Strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL)

Apple's iTV was the big new product announcement that came out not too long ago and created a lot of excitement. However the product will not actually be shipping until the first quarter of 2007, despite being announced in September 2006. That's a long wait for shipping. A lot of people were puzzled, as Apple usually does not like to pre-announce its product road map.

During its most recent earnings report, however, Apple Computer, Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) explained that it wanted to show customers a complete look at the whole digital media package strategy Apple was working on. This would probably be an indication that Apple was sending a message about iTunes movie sales, and why they would be worth downloading.

The pre-announcement also lets movie studios know that Apple had a strategy set up for movie downloads, not just customers. But as customers flock to the store to download videos the studios would probably follow. Apple indicated being happy with movie downloads and that they would soon release figures down the road.

Tobias Buckell is an author, freelancer, and professional blogger. He owns shares in Apple.

Tags: apple itms, apple itv, AppleItms, AppleItv, itunes music store, ItunesMusicStore, itv

Print this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-19-2006 @ 4:15PM

lantzn said...

Duh, you think? It was anounced that you could download movies at that time. Of course Apple wanted those buying movies to be reassured that they could play them on their TVs in the near future. Thus they'd sell more movies and is the reason they sold 1 million the first week.

10-19-2006 @ 10:27PM

RB said...

I agree. I'm a longtime Apple user but only started buying TV shows off ITMS within the past few weeks. I'm impressed with the quality AND the download speeds. The "iTV" is what people with big TV's want and what those of us with "older" Macs that don't support FrontRow need. If I could pre-order one I do it in a heartbeat!