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Apple 'Not Interested' in Outbidding AT&T to Acquire Time Warner

iamgalt said:
One of the smartest decisions Tim has made since he took over. :)
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I agree. I'd love to be a fly on the wall just so I could get a view of Apples road map... what is Apple thinking? The iPhone is stagnant. iPad's aren't doing anything different and computers... well Apple has just **** on this category. So where are you going Apple?
 
TurboPGT! said:
No, it isn't.

And ditching cable is not just about saving money. It is about paying for what you want, and getting value for your dollar. There is no value for me in renting a cable box for an extortionist price, and paying for a laundry list of channels I never have any desire to watch.

What I pay per month is also under my control. If I decide Netflix, or Hulu, or HBO, or _insert_ is no longer worth the $x.xx/mon...Its gone within 1 billing cycle.

I did a trial of Sling TV just for a taste of what another $20/mon could get me in terms of additional content through AppleTV. You know what it got me? Commercials. Lots and lots of commercials. No thanks. My house takes in a very minimal amount of commercials, since all of our TV consumption is through Apps where that is kept to a minimum, or non-existent. Not exposing my children to the hours upon hours of commercials that play in most houses has had a wonderful effect on their personalities. They actually have original thoughts! Unlike most other children (and adults) that are told what to think and how to feel every single day.

And, LOL, please...your xfinity box that you rent and the 19th century remote it ships with? My 3 and 5 year old can both use the Siri remote. And my AppleTV has no issues integrating with CEC functions and passing through 5.1 sound. It is tops.
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Have you actually used a xfinity voice remote? It crushes the Siri remote.
 
Macsterguy said:
I have TW internet with 405 Mbps download and 21Mbps up... I don't want AT&T to screw that up!
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Unfortunately AT&T won't be able to do that since they are not buying TimeWaner Cable but TimeWaner Media instead, and they have lil or nothing to do with the cable company...
 
Why would Apple waste their money on a media company like Time Warner?

They need to save their money for smart purchases like $3 billion on beats.:rolleyes:
 
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Macsterguy said:
I have TW internet with 405 Mbps download and 21Mbps up... I don't want AT&T to screw that up!
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Understandable common confusion. You do not have Time Warner internet -- no such thing. You have Charter Communications internet.
Time Warner (TW) is a media company
TW owns CNN, HBO, TBS, TNT, NBA TV, Cartoon Network, and Warner Bros.​
Time Warner Cable (TWC) does not exist anymore. It is now Charter Communications.
TWC was purchased by Charter Communications on a deal that closed in May, 2016 where Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks were purchased for a total of $67.1 billion.​
 
Looks to me like Apple was "monitoring" this situation more out of interest in forging new deals with the new Time-Warner owner than in buying the whole company outright.

It's quite possible Apple assumes it can work with AT&T as a partner more easily than Time-Warner. (They worked closely with them before, when the iPhone first launched, as the only carrier willing to modify back-end systems so "Visual Voicemail" would work properly, etc.)
 
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dan110 said:
Foolish mistake. The money spent on the now defunct Apple Car could've went to this with money to spare. They should take their cash hoard and buy AT&T and be a parent owner. Then they can have all the access to programming on AppleTV etc without having to pay for annoying deals.
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Please cite where you found any information that implies that Apple spent anywhere near $86B on Apple Car projects. Anything at all.
 
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AT&T buying Time Warner is bad for everyone.

AT&T's proposed merger with Time Warner is evidence that AT&T doesn't ever plan to invest in fiber to the home, writes Susan Crawford at Backchannel -- and that's just one of many reasons the merger is a catastrophic idea.

Think about it. AT&T sells wires to about 51 million homes, far more than any other telephone or cable company in the country. Because of its large presence in many markets, it overlaps with cable companies in many places -- AT&T overlaps with Comcast in 45 percent of Comcast's footprint and with Charter in 52 percent of its footprint. But, after a flurry of debunked press releases, it's totally clear that AT&T has no real interest in upgrading its copper networks to fiber to the home. Its capital expenditures keep going down, not up. (Would you trust the future to a company that doesn't see the need to increase investments in its core business, and instead is content to harvest profit from its subscribers?)
 
shk718 said:
Why is TW up for sale, if they're such a great company?
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I can give you 85 billion reasons why.
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dominiongamma said:
Apple has no right to complain how TV works if they aren't willing to spend money for TV.
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The reason Apple needed to get into this is because they are gonna get badly squeezed out of content by Netflix and Amazon, and even Google (which has Youtube, which means they own a ton of content).

Can anyone imagine how pathetically the iPod would have sold if it didn't have the iTunes store and the ease of access backing it?

Oh wait, you don't need to imagine. Just scale Apple TV sales down by a factor of 10, to account for the fact that Apple was considered a dying instead of trendsetting company at the time, and it didn't have half as much of an established ecosystem at the time from which the iPod could benefit, and that's how well the iPod would have done without content.
 
kingtj said:
Looks to me like Apple was "monitoring" this situation more out of interest in forging new deals with the new Time-Warner owner than in buying the whole company outright.

It's quite possible Apple assumes it can work with AT&T as a partner more easily than Time-Warner. (They worked closely with them before, when the iPhone first launched, as the only carrier willing to modify back-end systems so "Visual Voicemail" would work properly, etc.)
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True... goes back even farther than that.. Apple worked w/ Cingular before the AT&T merger to put out that "placeholder" of a candybar iTunes phone before iPhone era.
 
$85b is a bit of coin and lets be honest, WB is in bad shape. Whoever buys will drop another $2-4b to clean up the mess. Its a lot to ask. Apple would be better off giving ATT a sweetheart deal to get more content on the ATV.
 
mattopotamus said:
Cable is not going anywhere anytime soon. There are still plenty of people who watch more than a few channels, and it is far more expensive to build your own package.

Oddly enough, my xfinity box/remote is better than my ATV/siri remote.
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The CEO of AT&T will offer their 100 channels for $35 by streaming app. The reason for the price, the actual costs with profits for the media side $35. The price we pay above the $35 is the cable box, installers, support staff, profit, etc. The average price for this package plus box is around $70. Thus, the average consumer is paying $420 a year for their cable boxes. Additionally the cable companies costs are rising for the development and delivery of the necessary features as you noted. What will bring down the cable companies integrated hardware delivery model. Companies like Apple (possible FCC rules) who provide a great user experience at a very affordable price. Apple TV cost $200 last 5 years, while the cable box would cost $2,100 over the 5 years. I only see this trend excellerating.
 
Hardly anyone cares what Apple is doing with TV content. Apple cares more about TV than consumers do. Apple should stick to what lies ahead, not how easily I can get "Barney Miller" and "Bonanza" reruns for cash money.
 
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