Keynote thouights
So, I have to stress here this is really just my personal opinion, so for what it's worth....
iTV -er- Apple TV
- Pros: The UI is slick and pretty. The HDD was a surprise, and indicates they don't think they'll always be able to make streaming video work reliably. I played with one today and it's snappy.
- Cons: Will be a challenging sell outside of the enthusiast community. It's a $299 device that lets you watch TV in your living room! Comcast already put one of those in my living room. Comes with the little mac remote control, which feels too small/limited to me. It'll be a great itunes video enthusiast accesory, though.
- My prediction: Apple will make a nice margin and the device will sell 1M units in the first 12 months. It isn't going to get strategically significant numbers of living rooms against xbox, ps3, wii (much less comcast, etc...) But it is a version 1 product, so it'll be interesting to see where they go from here.
- Pros: The most stylish smartphone software ever. Seeing it in action, it's fun to see all the rich UI they have built with the obviously massive processor in this thing. They did a nice job of nailing the basics and going a bit beyond in a few places. Full browser and big screen on a phone is nice.
- Cons: The most expensive phone on the market? Niched by price and formfactor. $499 with a 2 year committment is amazingly high end. I don't have numbers, but that priceband must account for a % of a % of the market. I'm also not a real fan of the big flat PDA phone formfactor, but I know others are.
- Prediction: wow, a 10M goal in 2008? Really? Feels aggressive, but I'd hate to underestimate them. I'd bet on 5M, but again a nice margin and a win for Apple shareholders. That said, I think there's a lot of potential here and Apple will learn fast in the phone space if they can hold the cingular partnership together.
