Airplay is Apple's ‘Go to Market’ Internet TV strategy
Steve Jobs told the AllThingsD audience a few months ago that the reason no one including Google and Apple have been successful in the TV space is that they lacked a successful ‘Go to market TV strategy’. Apple has that strategy.
Context & Ripple Effects
Steve Jobs told the AllThingsD audience earlier in 2010 that neither Apple nor Google had cracked television because both lacked a 'go-to-market TV strategy' — a framing that positions distribution, not hardware, as the deciding factor. As 9 to 5 Mac reads it, AirPlay is that strategy: per MacDailyNews' same-day writeup, any H.264 web content can be broadcast over AirPlay straight to an HDTV, turning every iOS device into the tuner and every TV into the screen without new set-top deals.
The timing matters because Google is running its own TV go-to-market in parallel: on September 14, 2010, Google confirmed it was handing free Google TV devices to top advertisers ahead of launch. Two rival routes to the living room are being tested within the same week — Apple's installed base of iPhones and iPads pushing content to the big screen versus Google seeding the ad industry directly with hardware.
First-order effects
- Apple gains a way to put web video on the HDTV through AirPlay alone, so the value of an iPhone or iPad purchase now extends to the television without Apple signing any new content licenses first.
- Google's advertiser-seeding program puts Google TV hardware into the offices of the companies that fund most of the web, giving its platform a built-in promotional channel at launch.
Second-order effects
- If Jobs's framing holds, the contest between Apple and Google in TV will be fought over who owns the distribution path to the screen — pushing both to deepen lock-in on their respective device bases rather than compete on box specifications.
- Broadcasters and studios face a growing volume of H.264 web video reaching TVs through paths they do not control, pressuring them to decide whether to embrace or restrict AirPlay-style beaming.
Third-order effects
- A pattern in which go-to-market reach beats standalone hardware would restructure internet TV around whoever already has screens and devices in consumers' hands — an advantage incumbents in consumer electronics, not media companies, hold.
- Regulators and rights holders may eventually scrutinize beaming technologies like AirPlay if they become a default bypass around licensed set-top distribution, though no such action exists in the record as of September 2010.
The trend: The battle for internet TV is shifting from who builds the best set-top box to who controls the shortest distribution path from web content to the living-room screen.