LIVEdigitally

I’ve flip-flopped better than a politician on this topic, but just read an awesome piece that I wanted to share.  Highlights are:

Most fundamentally, all assumptions about Apple seem to stem from a misunderstanding of how differently Apple thinks and operates from everyone else.

For starters, Apple doesn’t chase markets just because they’re there. Nor do they get sucked into market share battles just so they can say they sold the most units (see: iOS vs. Android).

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In other words, for an Apple TV to be free-flowing with first-tier TV content in the same way that an iPod flows with first-tier music, Apple will need DIRECTV and/or Comcast to bless it.

ESPN, after all, earns $4.69 per subscriber household in affiliate fees on each and every cable subscriber. Apple’s good friend, Disney, owns ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel and a slew of other channels. Disney simply isn’t going to throw billions of dollars away in affiliate fees just so they can help Apple. All of the major TV content players view the world similarly.

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So where does that get you when you connect the dots? I’ll tell you where it doesn’t get you … to a television-like device that:

1. Is priced 2-4X the cost of an iPad.
2. Has sales cycles of one device every 5-10 years.
3. Has bad margins.
4. Has a serviceable form factor that for many people is good enough. (Apple challenges industries where the baseline experience is terrible. Television hardware wouldn’t seem to qualify.)

I strongly recommend reading the rest of it as well, one of the best perspectives I’ve seen on the topic of Apple in general actually.

Research firm Xyologic released a bunch of statistics about Google TV today.  And those statistics point squarely at the amazing lack of app installs on the platform.  Granted, these aren’t official numbers from Google or anything, but they seem quite believable (except for the whole Napster as #1 app thing, which is just bizarre, but then again, so are apps on your TV).  Here’s the top 10 chart:

Source: RWW

So, people don’t want to download apps on their TVs eh?  I guess I’m going to go with the whole “I told you so” as my commentary (and I wrote that piece well over a year ago).

TV isn’t about apps.  It isn’t about technology.  It isn’t about “interacting.”  And most tech startups seem to want to make it a lot more about apps, technology and interaction.  Which is probably the leading indicator of why most TV-related ventures crash and burn – unfortunately too many of the folks involved are far removed from the typical TV audience.

I’d go so far as to say “TV isn’t about entertainment” when push comes to shove.  I think the best word to use to think about TV is “escape.”

There’s a reason channel surfing still beats out DVR usage, and why cord cutting is still not really a mainstream behavior.  Using your DVR or browsing content lineups is not about “escape”.  It’s about “work”.

The more the industry tries to get people to “work” for simple, enjoyable TV viewing, the more the industry will be littered with failures.  The same is true in the Smart TV space, the Social TV space, the Connected TV space, etc etc etc.  Keep in mind, as it is so very relevant, the concept of the paradox of choice: the more options and “power” you give a consumer, the more you will probably just be frustrating them.  It’s pretty hard to beat the experience of good ol’ TV today, period.

So if you are building a platform, an app, an experience, a gadget, a whatever to “improve” TV, think about the concept: “are you helping people escape?”  If not, it might be time for a “pivot.”