Flash Drive in Apple’s iTV?
posted in Strategy, Software |The iPod Observer has some notes from Bob Iger’s statements yesterday related to Apple, iTunes and the iTV. It appears that Disney has sold quite a few copies of the 75 movies they launched on the iTunes Store last week, and Iger lets it slip that the iTV has a hard drive. Why are these important bits for Apple?
In one, Iger reports that Disney sold 125,000 movies via the iTunes Store in its first week. At $10-15 per movie, that’s a pretty good pop, especially considering that there were only 75 titles available during that week. Iger also predicts that Disney will generate $50 million in incremental revenue in the first year of selling movies through iTunes. By incremental, I assume he means to exclude TV shows and other content that was on the store prior to the movie launch, as well as excluding any potential cannibalization of movie sales through other channels.
In the other post, Iger states that the iTV has a small hard drive, and seems to suggest that we’ll be able to download content from the web to the iTV, then move it to our iTunes libraries on the computers. I had not previously seen confirmation of a hard drive, but rather only questions as to whether it had one. Of course, Disney can’t really confirm these specifications, and I actually wonder if it truly does have a hard drive. Perhaps Iger meant “storage” when he said “hard drive.” If the storage on the iTV is truly temporary (for downloads as Iger suggests, or caching for smooth playback), perhaps it is actually an 8GB flash drive such as those found in the new iPod Nanos. These are more reliable, smaller, quieter and cooler, and its existence might help to explain the $299 price tag (intuitively, the other components don’t seem to add up).
A flash drive might also give Apple much more flexibility in software updates for the iTV. If indeed they are in talks for Google to supply video to the device navigation interface, there are lots of possibilities for other content as well. Apple might choose also choose to include YouTube in the user interface. Or better yet, perhaps users could create customized channels of web-based multimedia content to access through the iTV user interface. Maybe I want to create a channel that streams the iWeb/iMovies from a friend’s website, or the Photostreams from my sister’s Flickr account, allowing me to sit on the sofa and very quickly and easily view new content from just about any web location I want.
Storage in the iTV opens up a world of possibilities, including the potential to bring Apple customers into the Web2.0 user-generated content in a new and interesting way, at least from a consumption standpoint. Hard drive as Iger suggests, or flash drive? What do you think?
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