A New Affordable Apple TV Streaming Stick May Be Coming Soon

It looks like Apple may be finally starting to get serious about Streaming TV. With global sales of iPhones having peaked and sales starting to slow down, Apple may be turning to cord-cutters for their next big thing.

Artist Concept of an Apple TV Streaming Stick

This is not good news for Roku and Amazon who both have been losing market share recently to the much more expensive Apple TV 4K media streamer.

Apple has really only had one Apple TV model for many years now and they always cost more than media players from other brands. With the release of their new streaming TV service to compete with Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which is rumored to arrive sometime in 2019, Apple may be looking to gather more cord-cutters under their streaming TV umbrella.

Investing heavily in original content and then announcing that Apple device owners will be able to stream it for FREE has created quite a buzz.

Now with the news of a new Apple TV Streaming Stick, this just may be the tipping point Apple needs to entice many more cord-cutters onto their platform.

Apple TV Not Quite As Restricted As It Once Was

Apple may have learned this lesson years ago the hard way. Once they had the number one hottest selling Apple TV media player. It fell seriously behind in sales to Google, Roku and Amazon streaming devices.

Why did this happen? Because as other less restrictive media streamer came onto the market, Apple at the same time was desperately trying to close holes in their firmware to make it more restrictive. Many users would jailbreak early Apple TV models to put on such apps as XBMC (the app before it was named Kodi) and others that let users play downloaded files that were not supported by Apple.

Last year this time, Roku was the number one selling media streamer until they also begin cracking down on private channels especially Playlist players which many people used on Roku to watch live and often illegal IPTV streams of cable TV channels, TV shows, and movies.

Meanwhile, IPTV apps are all on Amazon, Google Android, and Apple TV streamers and there has been no attempt to remove them. Also while Kodi can't be installed on an Apple TV without a developer's account which costs $100/year, some developers are offering a way to install it for as little as $25/year.

Even Roku may be a little concerned because they cut the price 50% on their flagship "Ultra" model for Black Friday. This was an unseen price until now.

Apple TV 4K Now As Powerful As The Nvidia SHIELD

Ever since Apple their latest Apple TV 4K and put in a much more powerful A10X Fusion chip (latest model) that could play 4K files and was every bit as powerful as a Nvidia Shield TV things begin to change. Many cord-cutters were passing up lower cost Roku and Fire TV media streamers and spending more to buy an Apple TV which currently costs between $179 to $199.

No doubt it also helped that DirecTV Now was giving away a Free Apple TV 4K if you signed up to their service for 3/months.

This may have gotten the word out that the new Fusion chip in the 4K Apple TV was no slouch. It really is quite fast and the interface is both easy to use and very smooth.

It also helps that almost every major cable TV channel can now be watched on an Apple TV just as easily as on any other media player.

Their single sign-on works extremely well and this keeps users from needing to sign into each channel over and over.

Don't Count Roku Out Quite Yet

Roku is working hard on their interface and implementing tougher standards for channel developers. This means their platform will continue to improve as well when new software updates are released.

While Roku spent a lot of time developing wireless smart speakers for Smart TVs which many already have the Roku interface built in. Their media streamers did not see any groundbreaking updates this fall. This could change as Roku once again shifts focus to new hardware upgrades which will make their media streaming platform perform even better.

With almost 4,000 channels on their platform from many genres, and a user interface that is super simple, Roku will continue to be a viable threat to the market share of both Apple and Amazon.

Will the Apple TV Streaming Stick be Another Big Hit From Apple?

By offering a lower cost Streaming Stick, along with Free access to their original content from their streaming TV service, Apple may once again have another big hit on their hands. Time will tell, but it will raise the bar once again for cord-cutters making owning a media streamer a much better choice than paying very high monthly cable TV bills.

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