D11 - Apple’s iTV Coming Soon, but Tim Cook’s Silence is Deafening

[by Reece]

Like many of us who are obsessively tracking the TV/video industry, I took the time to watch Tim Cook’s interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg yesterday at D11. In particular, the conversation starting at ~10 minutes when Swisher shoots at Cook with “Let’s talk about television…” It’s worth watching, but it leaves me wondering, is Cook’s reticence accidentally setting expectations for Apple TV way too high?

Cook’s response to Swisher, as has been Apple’s canned response for a long time, was that it’s still a hobby, his exact line being “We’re still playing in TV through Apple TV.” But he then goes on to illustrate all the demand (+13M devices sold - almost half in the last year), as well as everything Apple has learned from the Apple TV as an MVP, and finally says “There are lots of things about the TV experience that can be better… we answered some of those, clearly not all of those, and we’re going to continue to make that better.”

From that, and all the other rumors, we know Apple’s going to do more than just “play” in this space. They’re going to come in guns blazing, aimed at full disruption… 

…But what does that actually look like? 

In the preamble to this discussion, Cook says “We have some incredible plans… we have incredible ideas…” but when Swisher and Mossberg press him on what. those. ideas. are… he just stonewalls with “I don’t want to go into detail…”

Point is, Steve Jobs had a charisma and story around him that made you think “oh man… whatever Jobs delivers is going to be great.” Cook, on the other hand, doesn’t have that same natural gift (and it’s honestly ridiculous for Apple fans to expect it), but by dodging questions the way he does, I really fear that he’s setting expectations too high for himself, and for the future iTV. 

The most he said was that the TV experience hasn’t been brought up to speed with this decade, which is mostly true as far as selecting channels/programming guides etc., but that’s really not enough. The market demands a serious wow-factor in this next product. Xbox One is going after fancy features, but like I’ve said, the real win is a robust developer ecosystem.

If anything, Cook needs to start planting the seeds of a real vision for the eventual iTV… Hell, he doesn’t even need to plant them, he just needs to let the world know that he has the vision! Cable subscriptions disrupted! Digital hearth of the modern home! Whatever it is… tease it out a bit like Jobs used to. Who cares if it’s misleading? Just get an idea out there, otherwise the rumor mill will keep churning out expectations and hype-fatigue that Apple can’t meet.

Announcing ChipsAhoy.tv and the The Sweetest Bracket!

As we announced a little while ago, we’ve been working with Chips Ahoy! as a part of Mondelez International’s Mobile Futures program. It’s been super fun to work with the team behind a brand we’ve loved since we were kids, and it’s even better to see that brand dive into working with startups and video in totally new ways. Today we’re excited to announce that Chips Ahoy! now has their very own .TV network just in time for the Sweet Sixteen: ChipsAhoy.tv.

When we were brainstorming ideas for this project with the Chips Ahoy! team, we knew March Madness was coming up and that our favorite thing to do with cookies was “dunk,” but it turns out that sister Mondelez brand, Oreo, has a bit of a “dunkopoly” on the that term. Lauren from the Chips Ahoy! team sent us a ton of Chips Ahoy! cookies, we fell in love with the really sweet Chewy Gooey Chocofudge and The Sweetest Bracket was born!

Chips Ahoy! tapped a few of the hot basketball campuses across the nation and asked the question “What makes your bracket the Sweetest Bracket?”  Some of the students’ answers are pretty fun - we’re excited to show off the results on ChipsAhoy.tv. Check out one of our favorite videos here:

Think you’ve got your own Sweetest Bracket? Record a video, upload it to YouTube and tweet a link to it at @Shelby with #sweetestbracket to star on ChipsAhoy.tv!  While you’re browsing ChipsAhoy.tv you can also scroll down and check out other relevant March Madness content powered by the social web.

Shelby Summit 2013

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  • 8 Shelby’ers. 
  • 7 direct hits with snowballs. 
  • 6 pots of coffee. 
  • 5 beds. 
  • 4 meetings. 
  • 3 interns. 
  • 2 days. 
  • 1 hot tub. 
  • 0 connectivity.

The Shelby Summit 2013.

Last week, we held the first annual Shelby Summit — a two day event in which we took the entire team* up North a couple hours to a house in the woods with no wifi/phone service. We revisited our core values, laid out our strategy for 2013, set big goals, both personally and professionally, and had a lot of laughs along the way.

Planning the Summit came together quickly, as Dan and I realized that January is already off to a flying start and if we didn’t take a minute to slow down, it’ll be the second quarter before we knew it. Luckily, our team is small enough that we execute fast and our man Frasher is an ace on AirB’nB, so we found a big old house that was off the grid and booked it.

Prior to leaving, I asked the team to do two things. 

  1. Spend time thinking about goals for 2013. Professionally and personally.
  2. Submit ingredients needed to prepare a course with your partner (both assigned by Dan and I) for our team dinner Thursday night. More on this later.

Most of the team got to the house Wednesday night (the rest came up Thursday AM), and I kicked off the day with some opening remarks, ground rules, and the goal of the Summit: “Get everyone at Shelby aligned and excited for 2013, with clear goals as a product, company, brand, and as individuals.”

We then jumped into a discussion of our core values that we wrote together this past summer. For any startups considering this type of exercise, I highly recommend putting in the time early on, then revisiting them months later to see what holds up and what doesn’t. Based upon our discussion, one core value subsumed another, others evolved to better reflect who we are, but otherwise our values held strong and have directly impacted the way we work since writing them down. Further, having this discussion at the start of the Summit gave us a vocabulary with which to address everything else. 

After a quick lunch, we headed out for a hike around the Ashokan Reservoir. We lucked out with beautiful weather, and had some fun tossing snowballs around.

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The main dish of our Summit was next, with a few hours spent diving deep into our plans for the upcoming year. While Dan and I have a great direction for this, it’s imperative that everyone understands the challenges ahead and commits to the goals we all set as a company. This led to some amazing feedback for us as founders, and I am extremely fortunate to work with this team - passionate people who want to raise the bar. (I know all startups might talk this talk, but this team walks the walk).

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Now for some serious laughs. To prepare dinner, Dan and I assigned everyone to an odd-ball couple - people who don’t work together much or are generally opposites in personality - and gave each team responsibility for a course. No one was to collaborate, so it was a true pot-luck. 

  • Cocktail: “Old Fashioned” by Reece and Frasher
  • Appetizers: Prosciutto Mac’n’Cheese Cupcakes, Salad (dressing not homemade) Gorgonzola/Honey and Fontina Prosciutto Crostinis by Chris and Vincent
  • Main: Grilled meats. Lots of ‘em. Spicy Grilled Mushroom/Eggplant (Henry and Mike)
  • Sides: Salad with Homemade Poppy Seed Dressingand Candied Almonds(!) and Roast Potato & Pepper Hash by Josh and Ian
  • Dessert: Gluten-Free Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Oatmeal Cookies by Dan and Brendan

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All I can say, is this team can cook. Lots of pride went into the preparations and everyone enjoyed it, especially Chris and Vincent’s appetizers. [It’s also worth noting that I haven’t laughed that hard, for that long, in a while. My face hurt from laughing so much. This team is hilarious].

We cleaned up our act and hung by the fire for a couple of great games that will remain nameless (so as not to give away the keys to winning for future hires), before settling down for a discussion about goal setting. This involved explaining the S.M.A.R.T framework “Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, Timely” which we then all applied to our individual goals together the next morning. 

Having everyone share their goals out loud was a perfect capstone for the Summit. We now all know what it is we want to achieve as individuals, and how that will make us better as a company now, and in the future. I won’t list out our personal or company goals here, but if you stay tuned, they should be apparent in everything we do this year.

Here’s to our team and to 2013. Let’s do this!

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[Sometimes selfies are hard to do.]

*One teammate couldn’t make it due to some vacation time planned well in advance. He was with us in spirit.

#Election2012 Video Now Live at election2012.shelby.tv!

It’s Election Day!

This past few weeks, we’ve seen a bunch of great video about the election shared on Shelby. Today, we’ve taken all this coverage and wrapped it up into our new Elections roll at election2012.shelby.tv.

You’ll find video from the left, right, and everywhere in between. Whether you’re interested in healthy discourse or some good ol’ political satire, we think it’s worth watching. The coolest thing about it is that it’s entirely powered by community and constantly being updated throughout the day as more and more people are sharing and watching video.  

Check it out at election2012.shelby.tv and please don’t forget to exercise your right to vote today! 

—

via @chris.shelby.tv

Introducing NerdFitness.tv!

We’re so excited to be working with our friend Steve Kamb at Nerd Fitness to produce NerdFitness.tv!

Check out Steve’s post below for more details…

It’s an exciting time to be a Nerd Fitness Rebel!

Our goal at Nerd Fitness is to eliminate every potential excuse you might have for not getting healthy.  We’ve covered how to eat right, how to work out, how to be more productive, how to walk, run, and hike, how to do a push up, how to do your first pull up…but we still get one issue above all others:

“I just can’t seem to get motivated!”

I hear ya.  Some days, you just don’t want to get out of bed.  Other days you come home from work and that couch looks MIGHTY cozy.  Another round of Halo or Modern Warfare 3 sounds way more enjoyable than exercising.

Which is why we’ve created our own freaking TV channel!

NerdFitness.TV is born!

Nerd Fitness TV

A few weeks back while traveling through New York City with my boy James Clear, I had a chance to sit down with my friends Reece and Chris atShelby.TV

They’ve created an awesome video platform that lets people watch and curate their own channel of the best video they find all around the web (content from YouTube, Hulu, ESPN, Vimeo, etc.).  It also gets smart about content you like and don’t like, showing you the stuff you need to see and getting you back to the real world so you can keep kicking ass.

The SECOND I saw what they were building, a light bulb went off in my head: “We need to have a Nerd Fitness TV channel with an epic motivational videos playing ALL the time.”

The guys at Shelby agreed, and thus – Nerd Fitness TV was born :)

When you visit NerdFitness.TV, you’ll see my personally selected list of motivational videos that will make you want to run through walls, do a million push ups, walk to Mordor, and exercise around the world.

Anytime you are EVER in need of motivation – visit NerdFitness.TV, watch a video or two, and then go have the workout of your life.  It’s guaranteed to add ten pounds to your squat and make your Spartan war cry 15% more epic.

The Next Steps

This is just the beginning.  We’re fortunate to be one of the first sites to partner with Shelby, so there are a handful of features that they’re in the process of implementing.

Over the next few months, you’ll see NerdFitness.TV evolve  in a few different ways.  I can’t hint too much about what’s coming, but I promise it will be cool. 

If you’re interested in getting and curating your own channel on Shelby, you can request an invite at http://Shelby.tv or email nerdfitness@shelby.tv for an invite.

If you happen to struggle with motivation, today you no longer have any excuses.  NerdFitness.TV – you’re welcome, Rebellion!

Leave a comment with your personal favorite motivational video or any features you’d love to see added to NerdFitness.TV, and the NF team and I will select the best ones to add to the channel!

And don’t forget, we’re just getting started.  

Nerd Fitness TV is going to rule. Hard.

-Steve


Introducing Shelby Genius on iOS

Shelby Genius is available today in the iOS App Store! Download it here.

While in the midst of building the next generation of Shelby, we learned that YouTube would no longer be a core app in iOS6. We knew YouTube would inevitably fill that void with their own app, but we had an idea that was too fun to pass up, so our iOS dev Arthur hacked it together in a couple weeks. Using a piece of the Shelby platform that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, we’re pretty excited to announce Shelby Genius.

Shelby Genius is search + serendipity. On iOS, we built Genius to be a very simple app. It supports searches across YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion and returns a list of results that serendipitously includes results from Shelby’s video graph.  

We have to admit it’s pretty fun searching for random stuff (see our list above), and seeing what Genius thinks, but we’re even more excited about some of the tech under the hood. In particular, the Genius app supports background streaming to AirPlay and continuous playback of video.

What does this mean to the average user? Run a Genius search for your favorite band, start playing video and send it to your AppleTV via airplay. Now start using another app on your phone - you’ll notice that Genius video keeps playing on your TV in the background. When the video is done, the next video in the results will start playing.

Though it’s just the result of a quick hack, we’re excited to ship it and potentially use more of Genius in other places within Shelby.

You can download it here and let us know what Genius searches you love!

Q:I'm interested in finding out more about your "video card"... how did you come up with it? How's it different than what's on YouTube?

Anonymous

Thanks for the question! Our video card is centered around the idea that the best video experience for our users is also the most personal experience. This means the video card should have information about who is enjoying a video and how they’re interacting with it it, rather than more impersonal information like number of views or a stream of comments from people you don’t know.

Join the team building the future of video on iOS

We. Love. iOS. 

iOS has changed the way we will compute for generations to come and enabled developers to build apps that made us fall in love with our iPhones, our iPads, and soon… our iTV’s. 

Believe the hype. Apple will build an amazing TV experience, we have a good idea of what it looks like and we want Shelby to be the best social video experience out there. F that… we want Shelby to be the best app. Period.

So far, we built an iOS app that is insanely easy to use, elegantly designed and has some features that are first of their kind. Now we are looking for the iOS developer who will take Shelby iOS to new heights of function and form, while delighting users with serendipitous video discovery.

Why?

Because we love video. It is an amazing medium—that is so powerful and yet so nascent online—and we believe that 1) video deserves its own home and 2) that home should be built socially.

Who are you?

You are—first and foremost—a great person. You are also an iOS developer who believes in building simple, beautiful products. You can code with the best and have great taste for design. You are curious about the world. You are not one to just do what you are told. You are not one for being managed. You are one for video.

Who are we? 

We are not a team full of “rockstars” or “ninjas” or “wizards.” We are not high on ourselves. We are just a team of passionate people who love building great products. We love to learn and we have a ton of fun while we do it. We may dabble in ping pong. We may play music from time to time. One of us may wear jorts. Most importantly, we love video. More on us here.

What will you do with us?

  • Revolutionize the way people discover and enjoy video
  • Work with great people on a lean, agile engineering team
  • Be challenged to build the best stuff you have ever created
  • Kick a dent in the universe

We are super excited about building Shelby—as a product, company and brand—and we are fortunate to have the support of some of the best investors in the game. We offer healthcare, we work on the best equipment, we hang our hats in our own office at 23rd and Park in NYC, and we believe in G.S.D., so our PTO policy is more of a policy than a practice…

If you are interested, we would love to meet you. Please get in touch. Email hiring+ios@shelby.tv and please include links to any apps you built.

Welcome, Mark Johnson

danspinosa:

Hiring is straightforward; you need to find a great person who is passionate about building your company, fairly smart, and meshes well with the team (then let them loose!).  But hiring is difficult; finding these people (at the right time) is not often easy.

It took me 6 years to hire Mark Johnson.  While that’s a bit of hyperbole, I have known since graduating with Mark as Computer Engineers from Brown in 2005 that I wanted to build a startup with him.  He’s a phenomenal engineer.  Nobody pushed me harder in college.  And looking back, I’m still impressed at so much of what we built.

But we built that stuff for our professors.  Now we get to build for ourselves, and I couldn’t be more excited.

The Shelby team was already fucking awesome - returning from 10 days off the grid in Cyprus gave me even better perspective on that.  And now we get to add Mark to the formula (VMWare had him pushing too many pencils).  There’s so much more I could say, but I think this picture of Mark at our brand new west coast engineering campus says it best:

Porkchop sandwiches! It’s a Shelby.tv API!

As a bunch of you may know, we’ve been up to some exciting stuff at Shelby.tv this summer and have announced hackday.tv, a hefty video hackathon in New York.  We’ve only got a week or so to go, and we’re really excited about the press and ideas that people have been generating for the event.

“A hackathon for video hosted by Shelby… but Shelby doesn’t have an API, does it?” you ask, inquisitively.

Wrong, my friends.  Turns out our resident brogramming cyborg has been building a pretty awesome API that will let you harness the power of what we’ve built with Shelby for your own nefarious purposes (world domination not included).

“Porkchop sandwiches!” you exclaim excitedly.

We’re building an API that allows you to easily create incredible social video experiences. Our API tells you what videos are being shared in a user’s social graph (twitter, facebook, tumblr, email etc..). It tells you what people are saying about these videos. It not only tells you what videos your users like, it tells you what they’re going to like. This data is accompanied by a universal video player that allows you to stream video from any source (YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, CollegeHumor, etc) in one clean interface. Better yet, it allows your users to share the videos they’re loving with their friends, on any device, on any social network. 

We’ll be rolling out API documentation this week that you can add to your bathroom reading list, but in the meantime, here’s a few ideas we’ve discussed while drinking, so attempt them at your own risk:

Party Shelby - Do your late nights on weekends usually end at someone’s apartment with “no no no, watch THIS web video” conversations?  Well, build an app that uses any location based service (we dig foursquare) to compile a Shelby channel out of individual users all checked-in to a specific location. 

Shelby Subtitles - Videos with subtitles are always more fun.  Just ask Hitler. Throw some subtitles on a video with all of your friends and see who can come up with the most ridiculous ones.

Shelby Science Theater ∞ - MST3K fan? Use Soundcloud to add your own commentary over a video and throw it into your Shelby channel.

Check out our new API documentation here.

back to school @internzero

Sometime back in January, this guy Chris Kurdziel started following me on Twitter/Tumblr. I didn’t think anything of it, but he was interesting enough (via his own accounts Tw/Tu) that I followed him back.

A month later, we’d started TechStars and I wanted some support in planning for SXSW, so I posted looking for help. I talked to a bunch of candidates with shiny resumes, business school jargon, and alleged “passion for tech,” but none of them really ‘got it.’

Chris did.

He jumped in and worked remotely (from business school at Cornell), helping organize a great event for us at SXSW, taking a huge weight off my shoulders so I could focus on TechStars and endearing himself to us in the process.

So we brought him on this summer and affectionately dubbed him Intern Zero(among other nicknames), but let me be clear that Chris was anything but an “intern” in the traditional sense.

For starters, he wasn’t around to get us lunch and do menial work [ok… maybe we made him deliver cupcakes to Gary et al at USV once]. We also didn’t micro-manage. Sure, we coached and gave direction, but it was usually at Chris’ request. Hell - he even emailed us at one point with the subject line “i can haz moar badass.” Here’s an excerpt…

I’m writing this as a sort of “call to arms,” asking you all to help push me where you see opportunity for improvement.  Hold my feet to the fire, put me through hell, and demand things from me that may appear to be unreasonable (even if I have no idea how the fuck to do them).

You gotta love that! So we put a little more pressure on, let him loose and “moar badass” is just what we got. Proof?

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[Chris with Dan and Myles]

Today we are proud to officially announce hackday.tv - a 24 hour hackathon dedicated to showcasing innovation and creativity in the world of video. From booking the venue, to finding sponsors, API partners, et al… Chris is the man making it happen.

On top of that, Chris has done some solid blogging on his experience with Shelby and thoughts on our space in general. His post on Apple’s Tv Strategyblew up on Hacker News…

  1. What I’m doing this summer and why the heck you should care 
  2. Apple’s TV Strategy 
  3. Getting Ads Right in a World Where Bandwidth Isn’t Unlimited 
  4. Keyboard Cat is Cool, but Changing Video is Cooler

All this stuff, on top of helping us every day as we closed funding, built product recruited team members. Hell… he even held an event with another stud tech intern - John Exley - bringing together all the interns in NYC to talk about how to make the most of their experiences.

It’s not surprising that Chris lead that event as he has certainly made the most of his time with us. And though he won’t be around day to day anymore, we’re excited that he’s going to keep working with us from school. Thanks for a great summer, Chris. 

A few takeaways:

Trying to break into tech?

  1. Be good online. Have an active blog/Twitter account etc.
  2. Be willing to do anything, but also be able to focus on one thing and do it well.
  3. Execute like a mofo.

Bringing on interns?

  1. Find awesome people. Their resume is probably bullshit. You want the hustler.
  2. Set a general direction on a couple projects.
  3. Get the hell out of the way and let them show you what they’re made of.

Keyboard Cat is Cool, But Changing Video is Cooler

I’ve met a host of people this summer as a part of my internship with Shelby.tv and while most in the early stage tech community tend to see the huge potential in what we’re doing, a few question the application of such a technology to do anything consequential other than keep friends up to date on the latest memes that are circling the internet (I’m looking at you, courage wolf).

Founder’s Fund published an article recently with few really interesting points, one of which is that “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”  While it’s true that I’d love to see more truly transformational tech companies, I tend to agree more with Chris Dixon that the “next big thing” will look like a toy at first.  After all, Twitter seemed like a toy (and still does to a bunch of people), but it has profoundly changed the way that people communicate and interact with one another.  In its current form, Shelby is somewhat of a toy (one that I happen to love) and while she can certainly be used for spreading nyan cat love far and wide, I’d say that our vision of the future of Shelby is far more than that.

Internet video shouldn’t just be a medium that’s relegated to tomfoolery and humor.  While I love that stuff as much as the next guy (probably more), when you think about the sheer number of people in this country that sit on their asses and watch TV for hours a day, there’s a huge opportunity to put some really interesting and engaging content in front of people that might not otherwise see it.

I’ve already discovered a ton of video in Shelby that I wouldn’t have taken the time to notice otherwise. Here are a few quick examples from the past week or so:

  1. Educational Content - I’m a huge fan of TED talks, but there’s such a wide swath of content on the TED website that it’s often difficult to get through and figure out what I want to watch.  Not so when my friends are filtering that content for me - I’ve got the best of relevant TED Talks (like this one) delivered to my feed in Shelby.
  2. Climbing videos & extreme sports videos - these have inspired me to set ambitious goals for myself in terms of summiting mountains and pushing myslef to get better at the things I do.  I also find the cinematography in videos like this absolutely breathtaking and when viewed in HD on a great monitor, they’re a nice escape from the concrete jungle of NYC.
  3. Political content - I’ve been out of town for the last few days and as such I’m not spending as much time keeping up with the news as I normally do. I signed into Shelby and was quickly able to see highlights on what is going on in London with the riots and the financial markets. I also found the occasional comic relief.
  4. Creative content from Tumblr - If you follow more than a few people on Tumblr, you probably realize that the Dashboard is not the most effective way of viewing video content.  Most videos go unwatched since I quickly scan my Dashboard only once or twice a day.  Since we’ve been testing tumblr integration recently, I’ve stumbled across a few fun and educational gems: “carnivorous plants” and “vortex bubbles.”

These videos have captured my imagination and inspired me to make the most of my time outside of the office and away from the computer.  They require less than 30 minutes of my attention a day.  Shelby can be that kind of “video sherpa” for all our users.  All this content is accessible to everyone for the first time thanks to the internet (sorry, cable, you still kind of suck) and given the rate at which this stuff is growing, it’s even more important to help people find the video that moves them and the people in their lives.  

Sure, some of you may think I’m just trying to justify my love of the memefilled internet, but I really do believe that video is an incredibly engaging and interesting medium that can help change the world.  Just like music, video can transcend language barriers, connect, inspire and educate (just ask Salman Khan about that last one).

Video is a young art form - it’s been around a fraction of the time that music, literature and theatre have.  Much like Gutenberg’s printing press did for the written word in the 1400’s, the internet is enabling video to be widely and cheaply distributed in a way unlike ever before.  And if video is still so young, then the future is bright. Sounds like music to my…err… video to my eyes. 

Apple’s TV Strategy

[by chris]

A friend of mine at Intel Capital was in town a week or two ago and we sat down to have a long discussion about the future of TV and how social media and computing would integrate onto the big screen. He’s been seeing an increasing convergence of computing and entertainment, so it’s no surprise that in my brief time at Shelby.tv this summer, I’ve seen a host of new entrants in this space from enhanced social TV experiences like SocialGuide to platforms like Flingo.

In most multi-billion dollar markets, we usually see a lot of hot M&A activity and I suspect this expanded TV market (both hardware and software) will be no different. There’s one company that has a ton of cash on their balance sheet lately that hasn’t been using it for acquisitions, though: Apple.

I came across a great Quora post the other day about how Apple uses their large cash balance to achieve an advantage in their supply chain for their new products. I started thinking a lot about how Apple’s strategy with the iPhone and iPad might look should it decide to release an actual TV (as opposed to today’s AppleTV product). Chris Dixon has already written an interesting post about this (go read it if you haven’t yet), but in light of recent noise this week about how Apple’s release of a TV could increase their market cap by $50B-100B, I think it’s worth revisiting. Whether the market cap figure ends up up being relevant or not, I’d be willing to bet that when Apple does choose to enter this industry, we’ll see them deploy those cash reserves in a similar way to what they’ve done in the past. In the large flat screen market, this may be even more of an advantageous and disruptive tactic.

Over the past few years, companies like Samsung and Sony entered joint venture agreements because the fixed costs of purchasing LCD factories are so high and they needed to share some risk (among other reasons). In the case of Apple, they can use their incredible cash balance to easily get exclusive rights to next-gen display factories that will help ensure their success in disrupting the digital TV market. Even as a late entrant, Apple is well poised to help capture a big piece of the pie. As Chris Dixon says:

Perhaps Apple won’t enter the market due to its structure. But that didn’t stop them in mobile phones where the structure was similarly difficult. The mistake analysts made about the iPhone was to assume the current industry structure would be sustained after Apple’s entry. I’d be wary of making the same assumption about the TV industry.

Bingo. Apple has the cash position to do things that other TV manufacturers can’t do in their respective supply chains, and they’ll be able to tilt the industry structure in their favor as a result. So, when will Apple release the TV? My guess is probably not until 2012, but I’m no oracle. And when they do release it, I sure can’t wait to fire up Shelby on it.

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