Steve Jobs: AirPlay Video Streaming Coming to Safari and Third-Party Apps in 2011
One of the major new features deployed in iOS 4.2 last week was AirPlay, Apple's solution for streaming video, audio, and photos from portable iOS devices to the new Apple TV for display on users' televisions.
Context & Ripple Effects
AirPlay shipped just last week inside iOS 4.2 as the bridge between portable iOS devices and the new Apple TV, but its first cut was deliberately narrow: video streaming worked mainly through Apple's own apps and library. Steve Jobs has now said on record that video streaming over AirPlay opens up to Safari and third-party applications during 2011.
That promise matters because it converts AirPlay from an Apple-content convenience into a potential platform gate: whoever controls which apps and pages can push video to the television controls what the living room watches. It also extends the momentum from Apple's strong 2010 performance at a moment when the company is pushing deeper into consumer living rooms against entrenched set-top incumbents.
First-order effects
- Third-party iOS developers and web video publishers gain a path to put their video on televisions through Apple TV without building their own hardware or licensing deals with pay-TV operators.
- Apple TV's value proposition changes immediately for current owners: the box shifts from an iTunes accessory toward a general receiver for whatever an iPhone or iPad app can play.
Second-order effects
- Connected-TV and streaming-box competitors face pressure to offer equivalent phone-to-screen casting or concede that the smartphone, not the TV interface, is becoming the selection point for home video.
- Video services that stay out of Apple's ecosystem risk losing the big-screen audience, giving Apple additional leverage over app approvals and terms precisely when it is already flexing App Store control, as seen in the recent Android magazine ban.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the television's role recedes to a display while the phone becomes both remote and rights-holder gatekeeper — an access-layer position that lets one platform vendor decide which content reaches the biggest screen in the house.
The trend: Home entertainment control is migrating from the television and cable box to the smartphone platform owner, with AirPlay as Apple's mechanism for deciding who gets on the TV.