Apple's long-rumored Apple TV and iPhone will finally become a reality in 2014 said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who added a very important caveat: He's been wrong before.
In fact, Munster, who spoke at Business Insider's Ignition conference in New York on Tuesday, acknowledged that he's been predicting an "Apple TV" consistently since 2011. (Munster is referring to an all-in-one TV from the company; Apple of course has a product called Apple TV which plugs in to standard televisions.)
See also: Apple Aims to Control Your Home
Munster cites suppliers, patent filings and remarks from Apple execs for his predictions. He also polls consumers and looks at market trends. Reading such tea leaves, Munster predicts an Apple TV could claim 15% of the market and add 18% to Apple's revenues. Munster was less sure about an iWatch. His polling shows that only 12% of consumers want to buy an iWatch. However, he noted that Apple has trademarked "iWatch" in five countries.
Looking ahead, Munster sees Apple embracing the connected home, predicts an iPad Pro with a larger screen and bets that Apple will make a bigger play into mobile commerce in 2015 and beyond. Again employing back-of-the-envelope calculations, Munster notes that there are 132 million households in the U.S. Assuming each paid $100 for a connected home device, that's a $13.2 billion market. "An Apple TV could be the center point," he said.
The larger iPad prediction, meanwhile, is based on the assumption of a "pro" category for tablets. Apple introduced an iPad mini last year with a smaller screen than its flagship product. Finally, Munster noted that Passbook, an app that comes standard with iPhones, has been a notable failure. There are just 37 Passbook apps, he noted, which prompted him to dub the effort "pathetic."
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