Selling lemonade can be considered a hobby but for a company such as Apple with a marketing machinery and budget from its cash pile bigger than the gross domestic product of some countries, a hobby can be an empire. No sweat.
No, the maker of iPhones and iPads does not have a lemonade stand but it has labeled its Apple TV business before just like that, a “hobby.” However, today, the $99-set-top box might be raking in too much money to be considered as such. During the annual meeting of shareholders, the company disclosed that the product raked in more than a billion dollars in 2013.
"It's a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days," said Apple chief executive Tim Cook.
The Apple TV made its way to the living rooms of consumers in 2007 and has since then made access to online content from streaming services such as Netflix, HuluPlus, Disney, Bloomberg, HBOGo, among others, a lot easier.
At first it was not clear if the numbers disclosed by Cook refers to the actual sales of units, which could have translated to 10 million units. Apple clarified that this pertains to hardware plus content sales for the fiscal year.
While the current version of the Apple TV is still the ideal product the company wants it to be, it is clearly an indicator that people find what it offers attractive. We can only imagine what the sales will be like if Apple decides to roll out a fully-developed smart television set that iDevice fans and company investors have been craving for.
"A total of 28 million Apple TVs sold so far (since 2007). Total cumulative hardware venues likely around $3.5 billion," tweeted analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco.
"Apple TV is the fastest growing hardware prouct in Apple’s line-up. My estimate is 80% y/y," Dediu said in another post on Twitter.
During the shareholder meeting, Cook was also asked about products that the company plans to introduce in the near future.
"We're working on some things that are extensions of things you can see and some that you can't see. You can see we're getting ripped off left, right and sideways," Cook said.
Other interesting revelations of Cook during the meeting include the cumulative sales of the company in China, India, Russia, and Brazil that hit the $30 billion mark in the previous fiscal year, a good push for the firm as growth in North America slows down. The Apple chief executive also disclosed that about 80 percent of the 800 million iDevices in use run on iOS 7.
