Don't Rule Out Apple Ruling Your Living Room
The new Apple TV fits into Steve Jobs' entertainment vision

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_37/b4194030216774.htm

By Peter Burrows

What I love about this article is Job’s concept of “owning the living room”. It is so powerful and it forces Apple to think about all the parts that must fit together—technology platform; deals with content providers; pricing; etc. More and more companies have to think about their growth domains in this “above the tree line” way to fully capture the available consumer/customer dollar that is potentially available.

"Apple's (AAPL) decade-long run of iPod-, iPhone-, and iPad-fueled prosperity has featured only one notable dud. Introduced in 2006, Apple TV is a set-top box used to play movies and other digital fare on a TV via iTunes on a Mac or PC. Apple has sold fewer than 3 million of them, estimates Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu. The company sold that many iPads in three months.

And yet, at a Sept. 1 event in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple is bringing out a less-than-revolutionary upgrade.

So why bother? Even Jobs concedes the device (a cheaper Apple TV device) is mainly for tech hobbyists, and most of the Sept. 1 event was dedicated to the revelation of a new line of iPods and a social networking feature that works within iTunes. What Jobs didn't say is that Apple wants to become king of the living room. He tells Bloomberg Businessweek that when the time is right, Apple could open an App Store for the TV that could do for television sets what all those apps have done for the iPhone. Asked if the iPad could evolve into the TV of tomorrow, Jobs shrugs and says, "That's how I do most of my TV watching today."