APPLE’S QUIET MOVE INTO TVs
The rise and rise of AirPlay 2.
There was a spray of online tech reportage of Samsung’s key-note announcement at CES 2019 that Samsung TVs will soon carry Apple’s iTunes (picture below). And at a company level, this is certainly interesting — in former years the two companies have been more often in court than in cahoots, so the cooperation here is interesting in itself.
But the inclusion of iTunes is nothing too radical in user terms. The Samsung inclusion is just an ‘app’ offering the iTunes movie/TV rent/buy service. Many TVs offer multiple ways to access movie and TV rentals so that users can stick with their preferred service — the image below, for example, shows that the Google Play movie/TV service sits right alongside iTunes.
So it’s a small offering. This is not like having an AppleTV built-in, let alone being like an actual Apple television. And music is not part of it — no Apple Music subscription access, no access to your iTunes library of music to play. This is not iTunes as a desktop user would know it.
AirPlay 2: the real revolution
But for the latest Samsung TVs, there is another way to play your Apple Music subscription, and that’s AirPlay 2. The inclusion of Apple’s streaming technology will allow you to stream audio and mirror or hand over video streaming from an iOS device or Mac directly to the TV. And it’s not only Samsung — LG and Sony have confirmed AirPlay 2 for some 2019 models.
This potentially puts Apple technology right at the heart of home entertainment, where it has long wanted to be. Your iPad or iPhone will be able to control entertainment not only on the TV but throughout the home. You’ll be able to play music on the TV and sync it with other AirPlay 2–compatible speakers (from audio manufacturers already including Denon/Marantz/HEOS, Yamaha/ MusicCast, Sonos, Bluesound/BluOS, Dynaudio, DefTech, Naim, B&O, B&W, etc). Apple can now hijack the television as the hub for a whole-of-home AirPlay entertainment network. And with music it’s worth noting that AirPlay works at full CD quality; it’s a whole lot better than using Bluetooth.
HomeKit next? Android assault?
What next? It’s not hard to imagine Apple HomeKit following in a future update. We note that on Apple’s page for HomeKit TVs are already listed under accessories as “coming soon”. And Apple’s AirPlay page notes that “With AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, you can use Siri on your iPhone to send a video to your TV. Better yet, ask Siri to play a specific show in a specific room.” A note mentions this is “not available on Samsung TVs”, so we may assume it’s on the way from others.
And should this all go well, imagine if Samsung agreed to put AirPlay 2 on its Android phones and tablets. It might be seen as a win-win — for Apple this would further benefit its wider ecosystem, while for Samsung it would remove a key differential for iPhones and iPads. Samsung would be able to deliver true cross-platform devices, outside the usual Apple-Android divide.
So AirPlay 2 on televisions is the real revolution here. It puts Apple technology at the heart of home entertainment, where it has long wanted to be. It’s not clear whether Apple also benefits from license fees from the TVs, as it does from audio equipment including AirPlay; this might be an initial market-testing roll-out. (And of course we wait to see how well AirPlay 2 video streaming works under third-party implementation; it’s hardly perfect even within an all-Apple system.)
At the same time this move represents an opening up of the AirPlay platform so that other companies can provide end-points for iPhone and iPad control — good for Apple’s sources, though you’re now less likely to need an AppleTV. This final point aside, it all seems a neat move by Apple.
Can we assume that the strategy is also a fair indicator that the idea of an Applebranded television has had its day? We think so. It was never clear how Apple might break into TV hardware — how could it possibly cater to such a wide and fragmented market? But the TV itself was not the final goal; it was a means to an end. Having the TV become an Apple hub — that was the goal. Could they achieve it in a separate media box — the AppleTV? Kinda, yes, but not with the real integration that Apple must desire, and TVs are now smart enough to do most of that stuff already. Solution: get Apple tech into mainstream TVs. We say: bingo!