Tim Cook Reveals Why the Apple TV is Considered a 'Hobby'

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals why the Apple TV is considered a 'hobby'.

Q: Looking at the living room, you've said Apple TV is still on the hobby stage. What has the challenges been saying it's on the hobby stage or going into the future?

A: "In terms of existing product, we sold just shy of 3 million Apple TVs in the past year. It's very cool product and I can't live without it. We sold 1.4 million last quarter. It's clearly ramping, but the reality -- the reason we call it a hobby -- we don't want to send a message to our shareholders that we think the market for it is the size of our other businesses. The Mac, the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone. We don't want to send a signal that we think the length of that stool is equal to the others. That's why we call it a hobby.


Apple doesn't do hobbies as a general rule. We believe in focus and only working on a few things. So, with Apple TV however, despite the barriers in that market, for those of us who use it, we've always thought there was something there. If we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, we might find something that was larger. For those people that have it right now, the customer satisfaction is off the chart. We need something that could go more main-market for it to be a serious category.

If you don't have one, you should get one because it's a really cool product. "

Coincidentally, it was just reported that Apple TV supplies are constrained hinting that Apple may be planning to update the device soon.