Under Mr. Jobs, Apple dipped its toe only slightly into the television business with Apple TV, a set-top box for accessing Internet video. That product has been one of the rare disappointments in its lineup, especially when compared with smashes like the iPhone and iPad.
But many in the tech industry contend that television is ripe for technological makeover, and that the next big challenge for Apple, after the death of Mr. Jobs, is likely to be in that area.
“It’s the big area they haven’t colonized,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “It’s the thing we spend more of our time on than sleep.”
In the meantime, companies like Microsoft have started to take a stronger leadership role in helping to push the technology of television forward, as Apple did in areas like music and mobile phones.
Television is such a tantalizing target in part because people spend so many hours watching it, but also because the industry over all has been slow to innovate except perhaps in making screens larger. In particular, the consuming public is still waiting for television content — everything that people watch — to be delivered over the Internet in a convenient, affordable package on all the devices people are now using.
One big reason for Apple’s failure to gain traction in television is that Apple TV has not had a compelling source of television and movie content that allows the product to stand out. Although the company’s iTunes store is stocked with many popular shows like “Glee” and “Sons of Anarchy,” network and movie studio executives have hesitated to make all of their content widely available at attractive prices, in large part over concerns about angering cable companies, a big source of their revenue, and their pipeline into living rooms.
In August, Apple discontinued an iTunes rental service that allowed viewers to rent television episodes for 99 cents through the store for watching on devices like Apple TV, saying that consumers were not as interested in renting episodes as in buying them.
Last year, talks between Apple and television executives, including NBCUniversal, Viacom and Discovery, stalled over a plan to license their programs for an Internet subscription service akin to Netflix and Hulu Plus, according to executives briefed on talks.
The cold shoulder to Apple from television executives is a stark contrast to the success Mr. Jobs had in wooing the music companies when the iTunes Store was begun eight years ago. At the time, Mr. Jobs used his personal charisma to persuade record executives to let Apple sell songs for 99 cents each through iTunes. It also helped him that the iPod hadn’t yet turned into a blockbuster product.
The subsequent explosion in sales of 99-cent digital singles on iTunes further eroded compact disc sales, many music executives say. Television executives were determined to avoid the same experience. “It didn’t work in TV and movies precisely because it did in music,” said Mr. McQuivey of Forrester Research.
Mr. Jobs himself often downplayed Apple TV’s impact on the market. While he used lofty words like “magical” to describe the iPad, Mr. Jobs on more than one occasion referred to the $99 Apple TV as a “hobby” for Apple because of its lackluster sales. Analysts estimate the company has sold about two million of the devices. It has sold nearly 29 million iPads since the product was introduced in the spring of 2010.
In an on-stage interview last year at the D: All Things Digital conference, Mr. Jobs further expounded on his pessimism about the market by saying that it was hard to sell innovative television devices like Apple TV to consumers, when cable companies give their customers a set-top box for little or no cost upfront. “That pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation because nobody’s willing to buy a set-top box,” he said.
In the meantime, one of Apple’s rivals, Microsoft, announced a major new push into the television business on Wednesday, before the announcement of Mr. Jobs’s death. The company said it was entering a partnership with nearly 40 television providers, including Bravo, Comcast, HBO and Verizon FiOS, that will allow the 35 million members of its Xbox Live online service to watch mainstream cable programming through Microsoft’s game console.
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