How Will We Watch TV Next, And Will Apple Or Comcast Rule It?

By | March 18, 2016

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Apple ( AAPL ) has the future of TV all wrong, says a Barclays analyst who follows the cable TV industry and who’s upbeat on Comcast ’s ( CMCSA ) X1 service platform. Apple, Alphabet ‘s ( GOOGL ) Google, Comcast and others are vying to be the gateway to entertainment, says Kannan Venkateshwar, a Barclays analyst, in the report. He expects a battle to unfold as both pay-TV companies and technology rivals aim to be the “aggregator of aggregators,” the one-stop shop consumers go to for all forms of content. Apple rolled out its fourth-generation TV hardware in late 2015, but it’s been stymied in content talks with media giants and has shelved plans, at least temporarily, for a web-based TV service. “According to Apple, television will become a collection of applications. We believe the world is likely to move in a different direction, with an aggregator of aggregators, which then directs traffic to all other apps,” Venkateshwar wrote in the report. “In our opinion, those that control the ‘last mile’ and the relationship with the consumer, like Comcast, are in a much better position to be the aggregator than technology platforms like Amazon ( AMZN ), Google or Apple.” In September 2015, Apple introduced new TV hardware, including a Siri-controlled remote control, and added an app store to the platform. “We believe the future of television is apps,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. Pay-TV companies, though, may be poised to build up relationships with media and entertainment companies, speculates Venkateshwar. “Companies like Comcast are able to aggregate every stream of content used by a consumer (TV, DVR, video-on-demand, gaming, etc.) while technology platforms like Apple can only aggregate subscription VOD content,” he said. “While it may be difficult for companies like Comcast to compete with the likes of Apple on the metric of user experience, we think the resources being put behind the vision at present seem to be moving in the right direction, with the evolution of the X1 platform being a prime data point.” Comcast expects half of its 22 million video subscribers to be using X1 set-top boxes by the end of 2016. While X1 currently does not support a Netflix ( NFLX ) app, under Venkateshwar’s vision it would have to. The X1 entertainment platform provides access to live broadcast, on-demand video and DVR-stored content. In November, Comcast partnered with 30 broadcast and cable networks to bring short-form Web clips to X1 set-tops as part of its video-on-demand (VOD) lineup. IBD 50 company Alphabet gets a best-possible Composite Rating of 99 from IBD, looking at earnings growth, stock performance and a raft of other measures. Comcast has an 88, Amazon a 68 and Apple a 66. Image provided by Shutterstock . Scalper1 News

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