Apple announced blockbuster earnings yesterday, and gave a brief update on the black Apple TV box, which has sold 25 million units since 2010. That is an impressive number for a box, which has largely remained unchanged for years.

Not a hobby, but what then?
Apple continues to assure us that it has grander plans for TV, but Apple TV has remained largely unchanged since the introduction of the black puck in 2010. It has received a hardware update for 1080p resolution, a slightly refreshed user interface and some additional – mostly US-based – services.

Still, 25 million Apple TV units have been sold to date, which probably makes it one of the most successful TV platforms out there. We know that it has a healthy lead over the Roku, and LG recently confirmed that there are 5 million webOS TVs in the wild. Samsung is not providing numbers for its old Smart TVs, but it is restarting its efforts this year with Tizen.


Apple TV sales appear to be slowing - or at least plateauing. It sold 7 million from March 2013 to April 2014, where it reported 20 million. This means that Apple has sold an additional 5 million from April 2014 to December 31, 2014 when the quarter ended.

Rumors about a new box with an app store, Siri, game support, and more continue to be passed around, but it appears that Apple is still waiting for some pieces to fall into place. The next big product in its pipeline is Apple Watch, which will be launched in April, and it seems unlikely that Apple will release another major category at the same time.

In the last quarter Apple also sold 74.5 million iPhones, 21.4 million iPads and 5.52 million Macs, and presented the highest earnings in a single quarter of any company in history.