Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Goodbye, 2012. Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out
- Published on Friday, 21 December 2012 18:38
- Pete Putman
- 0 Comments
This will be my last post for 2012. And what a year it’s been.
We were dazzled by 55-inch OLEDS at CES nearly a year ago that will not make it to market. We’ve seen record financial losses at some of the most venerated names in consumer electronics (Sony, Panasonic) and one long-time Japanese brand on the verge of bankruptcy (Sharp.)
TV sales continued their decline from last year, as did TV prices. It’s now possible to buy 42-inch LCD TVs for quite a bit less than $400. The obituary is being written for plasma, according to most analysts. (I agree.) Many LCD TV manufacturers and retail brands are now branching into (get this) LED lighting.
Viewing of traditional broadcast TV channels fell off the cliff this year, except at NBC. AMC is the hot channel now, and ironically, they used to just run old movies with innumerable commercial interruptions. There is evidence that cord-cutting is gaining in popularity (it’s the economy, stupid!) and video streaming has supplanted sales and rentals of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. My gosh, Disney and Netflix are now partners in streaming!
The hot products this season aren’t TVs, although really big screens are dirt cheap and have seen a spike in sales. Digital cameras are threatened by smart phones, with 2012 shipments off by as much as 40% from last year. Now, we have DSLRs and point-and-shoots with built-in Web browsers, quickie image editors, and the Android OS. (I think that’s called a phone now?)
No, the hot product this year is the tablet. iPad, Surface, Nook, Galaxy, Kindle, take your pick – they’re all popular, and the Consumer Electronics Association predicts that 50% of American homes could own at least one tablet by the end of the holiday selling season.
Interest in 3D has largely waned among the general public and TV manufacturers, contrary to what you may read on some die-hard 3D enthusiast Web sites. From all accounts, the 3D Olympics broadcasts found their biggest audience in the production trucks adjacent to the events in London.
So what’s the next big thing? Why, it’s 4K, otherwise known as Ultra HD (except at Sony, who always marches to the beat of a different drum). Never mind that there’s no content to watch; you can buy in for a mealy twenty grand. Or, you can wait until after CES and pick up one of the new Chinese 4K TVs for a lot less.
Prices for flash memory are dirt cheap, further depressing optical disc sales. You can buy 32 GB SD and Micro SD cards for all of twenty bucks now. That’s enough space to hold almost six two-hour 1080p movies, using MPEG4 H.264 compression.
We’re seeing a major shift away from value in hardware to value in software – content, apps, whatever you want to call them. Face it; “electronics is cheap!” And more and more of our gadgets are coming from China, which is evolving into the largest market for consumer electronics in the world.
Front projectors came under heavy fire in the commercial AV space, threatened by super-cheap and big LCD TVs. But they’re firing back by adopting lamp-less projection engines, using LEDs, lasers, or combinations of the two. The rear-projection TV category is officially RIP now, after Mitsubishi threw in the towel in late November. If it ain’t flat, consumers don’t want it.
You know things are nutty when Samsung and Apple seem to spend most of their time in court suing each other (and Google, and vice-versa), yet all three companies paired up to make a $500M bid for Kodak’s digital imaging patents. You remember Kodak, right? They once made photographic film, and cameras, and processing chemicals, etc. (Don’t remember them? You must be a Millennial.)
The industry is obsessed with the “second screen,” although they can’t quite define how it is used and how often. We’re obsessed with the idea that we can stream any movie or TV show we want, at any time and in any place, but continue to be surprised when the monthly bill comes in from Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and so on. And why is it that broadband speeds are so much faster abroad, in countries where the government often maintains the telecommunications infrastructure?
Despite claims that more airwaves are needed for wireless broadband (at the expense of UHF TV broadcasters), we found out the hard way during Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather that, more often than not, broadcast TV was the only reliable way to get news updates when the power went out, trees fell down, and buildings flooded. (Some lessons are just hard to learn!)
It’s been quite a year, and Ken and I have enjoyed trying to explain the significance of many of the developments that you’ve heard and read about. We’ll continue to do so in 2013 on an all-new Web site (same name) that should be somewhat easier on the eyes and faster to navigate.
Look for a launch of the new site sometime in mid-January, right after that annual exercise in electronic insanity that takes place in Las Vegas every year. Both Ken and I will have our usual coverage and analysis, and maybe we can even find a couple of gems amongst all of the electronic detritus that lines the aisles of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
That’s it for now. Have a safe and happy holiday season and a safe New Year. And in the wake of the Newtown, CT tragedy, remember to keep all the gadgets we lust after and “can’t live without” in perspective: It’s just a bunch of dumb wires and components when all is said and done.
There are more important things in life…
Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime (TV) Blues – Pete Putman
- Published on Friday, 14 September 2012 17:49
- Pete Putman
- 0 Comments
With the economy wobbling steadily towards a recovery and the digital TV transition well behind us, most consumers appear content to sit on their existing TVs, looking for a rock-bottom deal as an incentive to upgrade.
There are a host of reasons why TV sales remain sluggish. The most obvious is spiking interest in so-called ‘second screen’ TV viewing platforms, such as tablet computers, laptops, and mobile phones; all at the expense of conventional TV sets.
Another reason is the low rate of turnover on TVs purchased within the past 5 to 10 years. (Yes, I know people that are still using older Samsung, Sony, and Mitsubishi rear-projection TVs from the start of the last decade!) I’ve even run into a few folks lately that have massive flat-CRT TVs from 12+ years ago that are still humming along. ‘Yes,’ they want to replace them, but ‘no,’ they don’t have the cash right now.
You can’t fault TV manufacturers for trying. There was plenty of hoopla back in 2009 when 3D TVs made a splashy entrance. Today? 3D functionality is mostly an afterthought, and is built-in to more than half the models in any given line-up.
I’ll take a contrary position to many of my colleagues at Display Daily and state that 3D isn’t going to be a factor in driving TV sales for several years – that is, until a workable, quality glasses-free solution comes to market. And that will likely require 4K display glass to implement. Sales of 3D TVs have consistently been tepid in North America (stronger in China and Indonesia), and manufacturers aren’t talking much about them these days, as Chris Chinnock detailed in his CEDIA report last week.
What about demand for Internet-connected TVs? I figured Internet connectivity to be a big driver of future TV sales, but it looks like I guessed wrong – at least, in this part of the world. A recent study by GfK Associates revealed that NeTVs were most popular in China, Brazil, and India, while the United States, Great Britain, and Germany lagged behind. GfK went so far as to say that viewers in the latter three countries “…are stuck in an ‘analog’ mindset, whereas viewers in emerging markets are more likely to exploit the digital capabilities of Connected TV.”
According to the GfK report, only 29% of United Kingdom and 29% of U.S. consumers indicated that they were specifically looking to buy an Internet-connected TV, as opposed to 61% of respondents in India and 64% in China.
There was a hidden “ah-ha!” in the GfK report, though. 67% of all respondents are definitely interested in some form of touch and/or gesture control in a television, and 43% want to control their TV with something other than a traditional remote control. Perhaps TV manufacturers need to focus more on improving the user interface to drive future sales?
One of the problems with NeTVS is the diverse and non-compatible operating systems and GUIs used by different manufacturers. At the recent IFA show in Berlin, LG Electronics and Philips announced they would join forces to develop a common NeTV platform for listening to music, watching Internet videos, and playing games on line.
Both companies are founding members of the Smart TV Alliance (http://www.smarttv-alliance.org/) and are actively soliciting additional members. Their goal is to develop one common platform for apps and the OS so that consumers feel comfortable working with any TV brand.
However, CE giants like Panasonic and Samsung are deeply invested in their own platforms, like VIERA Cast and Smart TV, and have shown no enthusiasm for working with competitors. “Alliances may be possible, but we’re not at that stage yet,” Hyun-suk Kim, the head of Samsung’s TV business, said in a Bloomberg story. “Everybody is using their own platform right now, but the small companies find it very difficult to get content and services. Having a unified platform would be very helpful for the industry but I’m not sure it’s the right time for Samsung.”
Could Google’s Android platform be the answer? The first version of Google TV was met with a large yawn, and the second roll-out isn’t faring any better, according to Bloomberg. Both Sony and LG have built-in Google TV GUIs in their TV products – a huge improvement over the clunky, slow first version. But to date, consumers aren’t buying it.
Perhaps the answer is content delivery. TV manufacturers have tried for years to incorporate some sort of content pipeline interface and advanced program guide, with limited success. At one time, LG even built hard drives into several of their plasma TVs for time-shifting, and the number of ‘boxes’ available for Internet streaming is seemingly endless.
Today, most popular video and movie streaming sites are directly accessible from ‘apps’ and built-in channel buttons on late-model TVs; the best-known being Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, which together account for better than 70% of all Internet video traffic.
Harnessing content and selling it is what Apple is all about, and it’s long been rumored that they will launch a TV this fall. Not so fast! says another story on Bloomberg.com. According to the story, Apple has run into a brick wall with cable companies such as RCN and Comcast, along with major networks like CBS.
The reason? Cable and media companies are concerned that a better-designed Apple product will undermine their business model, and fear that Apple will create a better user interface. As a result, analysts are predicting that we will definitely not see an Apple-designed television this year. “If I’m a cable company, do I really want to let Apple into my house?” said Jason Hirschhorn, the former chief digital officer at MTV.
The last consideration is 4K, which for 99% of all consumers is simply a pipe dream – too expensive, no content (yet), and little perceived value. Yet, that didn’t stop Sony and JVC from both announcing 84-inch 4K LCD TVs at IFA and CEDIA. (And yes, they are plenty expensive!)
There are two problems with these announcements. First off, Sony hasn’t made a profit for the past 8 years in televisions, and in fact has lost a considerable amount of money, dragging the company’s stock price down. So why bother with a $20,000 TV product that will sell in miniscule amounts? Probably to be cutting-edge and trendy, a mindset that has driven Sony’s marketing and sales efforts for many years now.
Second, JVC is a very minor player in the TV business. As a small Japanese electronics manufacturer working under tight budgets, they can’t hope to have significant sales in televisions, and may have just brought this product out to make a splash. They do much better with their industry-favorite D-ILA LCoS home theater projectors, of which there is now a 4K version.
Throw in LG’s recent announcement that they won’t be able to ship a 55-inch OLED TV to market in Q4 after all, and you can hear a loud, collective sigh of despair and frustration rolling eastward across the Pacific Ocean. We’re less than three months from Black Friday, and no one has the answer(s) yet…
This article originally appeared on Display Central 9/10/12.
http://www.display-central.com/home-entertainment/aint-no-cure-for-the-summertime-tv-blues/
Hey, This Is Really Hard!
- Published on Friday, 28 October 2011 15:45
- Pete Putman
- 0 Comments
A story in the October 27 edition of the Wall Street Journal states that television may no longer be the ‘king of the hill’ when it comes to watching programming.
Food for thought: Apple’s high-end 10.1” iPad costs more than a 42-inch LCD or plasma TV (even a 42-inch LED-backlit LCD TV). And based on a presentation in my Display Technologies session at the just-concluded SMPTE Fall Technology Conference, more and more sales of ‘displays’ are going to switch to smaller, portable devices like the iPad, and away from conventional TVs.
Neither Internet-connected TVs nor 3D have helped revive TV sales, which slowed considerably after the 2008 recession. According to DisplaySearch, more than half of all new TVs shipped by 2015 will have Internet connections, just as more and more TVs will include 3D as a feature and not a premium upgrade.
The WSJ article quotes TV industry executives as speculating Apple, Google, and Amazon might enter the TV arena with products of their own. Apple’s TV prototype is already circulating through factories in China, according to several published reports. And Amazon already has experience in mass distribution of content over its Kindle platform.
Profits are hard to come by in the TV business. Three of the top four Japanese TV manufacturers said they lost money on TV operations during Q2 ’11, with Sharp being the exception – although Sharp’s LCD fabrication business was its biggest loss leader in the same time period. I have previously documented Sharp’s rapidly-diminishing market share in U.S. TV sales, which has been accompanied by a worldwide decline to about 8% of the market for the latest reporting period.
Over in Korea, similar red ink was seen at Samsung and LG’s LCD fabs, according to the article. In contrast, the TV marketing and sales operations were profitable. The challenge that all manufacturers face is continually declining values even with larger and larger shipment volumes, and the fear that TVs will soon fall into the low-priced commodity trap of computer monitors.
Sony’s continuing struggle to make a profit in LCD TVs for the past eight years shows that even a strong brand can’t carry the day anymore. The real threat is between smaller, portable wireless tablets that can do an amazing job with video playback.
On my flight home last night from SMPTE, I counted two dozen iPads in use playing back cached video or DVDs, plus numerous notebook computers. Each and every one of those products is now climbing the hill, ready to topple the king…