True but, can't you kind of say the same about phones? My sister buys Moto-G's. They cost her $120. Apple charges more. They make their own market. I don't know how much I'd be willing the pay but I feel like I'd pay for an 65" Apple TV. Sony, LG, Samsung, Roku, TCL, all make crap TVs that want to spy on you. They are almost universally underpowered for their apps and OS and are all jank AF. i have an AppleTV plugged into my Sony and a few times a month I bump the bad remote and it switched to Google TV and tries to get me to sign in so it can serve ads at me.
The market for an apple branded TV might not be the same size as phones but I suspect it's big enough to become 5% of their profit.
Who would have guess headphones would do so well before they did so well?
No, at least not at the flagship $1k+ market Apple competes in. Maybe for $120 motos, but apple is competing in an entirely different market segment. They're absolutely not commodities - apple charges a premium with strong margins and a differentiated product. They have regulars who upgrade (bi-)yearly, regardless of the features and price and necessity. They literally have a subscription program for iPhones.
> The market for an apple branded TV...
They already have the most profitable part of the TV market. They sell an expensive add-on to TVs that offer over-the-top subscriptions and software services. The remaining panel is sold nearly at-cost on the assumption that the underpowered processor inside will serve you ads instead. They're expensive to ship, tough to stock, and high-end ones worth selling are a niche market.
Apple sells computer monitors, which are pretty close to TVs in terms of "commodity" status, and the products are like 2x the cost of their closest competitor spec wise. That should be a clear indicator on the potential and costs for even bigger screens.
> Who would have guess headphones would do so well before they did so well?
Well, they bought beats who certainly helped prove the market for headphones expensive headphones from a recognizable brand (to say nothing of Bose, Sony, etc who had sold headphones for a generation prior).
Same applies to everything else electronic that I own.
While the Apple Remote natively uses Bluetooth to communicate with the AppleTV, it does have IR to control TVs that don’t support CEC.
A TV is bulky, race to the bottom commodity that is only replaced every 5-8 years.
> Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.
I don’t think Apple has any issue selling AirPods. But honestly, I do like my $70 Beat Flex for traveling. I don’t have to worry about them falling out of my ears and between the seats on flights and the double flange ear tips block noise better than AirPods Pro.
I’ve had touch screen convertible Dells. I never used the touch screen. They are bulky, the screen ratio is off either way compared to an iPad. On the other hand, my wife now uses an iPad Air 13 inch with a regular old cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and she loves it. Her x86 MacBook Air was getting long in the tooth.
This is before the newest OS with real windows.
[1] or more relevant to the HN crowd “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”