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Apple's TV Best Bet Is Right Under Its Nose

This article is more than 10 years old.

Surely if Apple disrupted digital music and smartphones and tablets, then if it wants to do the same with TV, it will.

There's the premise you will read a lot this week, as Cupertino announces upgrades to its Apple TV device. But as Erik Sherman and Peter Kafka and even I have pointed out, TV remains a very different animal indeed.

The larger TV disruption won't happen by throwing a bunch of apps at it. Sherman:

What all the would-be powerhouses must do is negotiate the right to make things more convenient for consumers.  Another way of putting that is an end to bundling programs so people order only what they want.

Don't hold your breath. Both creators and distributors will continue to shore up their content because they can. TV isn't distributed the way music is. Record industries never bundled all of their artists together and made consumers pay for large chunks of the entertainment to get that one song. Kafka:

... content guys like Disney are inking seven-year or 10-year deals with distributors like Comcast, which will keep the bundles intact for a long time, tying access to ESPN directly to access to other Disney-owned channels like ABC Family and the Disney channel.

To satisfy customers' needs, creators and producers increasingly release more content to streaming devices -- be it set-top boxes or mobile -- with a regular TV subscription. It will take a generation of non-cable/satellite-dependent creators to overcome that damming of high quality entertainment. In the meantime, for most, streaming will be a free side dish that comes with the cable/satellite meal. Sherman again:

Although there has been some cable cutting, in which consumers drop pay TV and either use antennas or run a service like Netflix through an Internet connection, traditional TV distribution has an insanely high rate of market penetration.

So with all the talk about Apple moving into your living room, the company's best bet in TV may be right under your nose: The mobile device. And that's because the stream TV execs does release is an extremely important one to navigate.

Ooyala, the online video company started by former Google employees, recently released its report for the first quarter of 2012. No surprises: Mobile TV watching is growing fast. For example:

The overall share of time watched on smartphones grew by 41% last quarter. The share of time watched on tablets grew by 32%.

And a lot of that viewing is happening right when you should be watching your living room TV:

On a typical weekday, a full third of tablet video plays occur between 7pm and 11pm.

Right now power users are driving those numbers:

Most video publishers have a small group of super-engaged viewers. Our analysis shows that 10% of a publisher’s audience watches more than five of its videos in a given day. Smart companies will find new ways to identify and engage these “power viewers.”

But that's going to change as more people enjoy the advantages of mobile watching. And streaming when and where you want is exactly where Apple shines. The iPad is a great watching device. In fact, for the single viewer it might even be preferable to TV for certain kinds of shows. And the dramatic improvements in screen quality makes both the pad and phone good options for long-form viewing.

The result so far:

Following Apple’s March release of the iPad 3, the amount of video watched on tablets jumped 26%. iPads presently account for 95% of tablet video viewing, according to Ooyala’s data.

Those are numbers Apple leaders don't want to watch degrade any time soon. If they throw a little attention Apple TV's way, it's a long-term strategy. But for now, enhancing the mobile watching experience is, and should be, Apple's higher priority.