The new 4th generation Apple TV was released less than three months ago with the major addition of a TV App Store.  Yesterday’s Apple TV Tech Talk event in NY was a great opportunity to meet with (many) hundreds of interested developers and publishers and also to hear an update from Apple reps about the platform and best practices.

The first thing to note is that it is still a very early market and not much data is publicly available about the size of the opportunity, download volumes, usage etc.

App store intelligence will become a little easier from now on since App Annie just announced support for Apple TV Apps, allowing developers and publishers to track their apps’ rankings as it’s done on iOS.

App Annie also released a snapshot of the top categories for Apple TV apps by the number of downloads. As expected, Games play an important part, but not as predominant as on iOS. In fact in the US, Entertainment is the leading category, along with News and Education. Combined, they account for roughly twice the amount of downloads than the Games category.

This information is not surprising since TV Apps open a new horizon in the typical living room entertainment patterns, enriching the on-demand consumption of media, news and educational content.

 

 

One interesting data point that was shared at Tech Talks is the split betweenbusiness models on the tvOS App Store compared to iOS App Store that is (as expected) heavily skewed towards premium (47% vs 18% of the catalog).

One of the reasons for this difference (besides the different expectations of “entertainment in the living room”) is that as of now there is no way to point ads to direct download on the tvOS App Store, although this feature is expected to be added in the future.

As a result of this, discovery on the tvOS App Store is heavily reliant upon featuring by Apple editorial team, since current marketing campaigns must explicitly instruct users to search for the app on the Apple TV, thus limiting their effectiveness. (see an example below)

 

When planning a tvOS app a few important considerations have to be taken into account:

– Business model  between premium, free, freemium (free + IAP) and paymium (paid + IAP). It all depends on your business objectives: do you target reach, revenue or both? Is the tvOS App to be considered an extension of your iOS app, or is it such a separate experience that it deserves to be marketed differently?

– Universal purchase: this is a new concept introduced by tvOS and a very important one when planning the launch of an app. Universal purchase means that the tvOS and iOS bundles share the same App Store entry and the same IAPs, so that buying on one platform will also enable access on the other. Although this might be the best user experience for some apps/services, it adds limitations because it restricts both platforms to the same business model. My observation is that many apps and games are actually splitting the tvOS app as a different entry and often using different business models (premium on tv and freemium/ f2p on iOS).

 

Regarding publishing and featuring, the tvOS process is the same as for iOS: the store refreshes on Thursdays and the same guidelines for enhancing your chances of featuring apply.

 

The Tech Talks event featured some interesting sessions about UI that presents a completely different paradigm from mobile devices and how to better leverage the Siri Remote and the new tvOS kits. You can dig into the resources from Tech Talks sessions that are already available, but I will highlight some takeaways here. In a nutshell it is important to keep the usage consistent with the overall tvOS UI:

– Focus is the main navigation method (no cursors!) and it makes it very intuitive and immediate to navigate through menus and libraries of content.

– Menu button should always be used as a back button. It functions as a pausebutton only in continuous play games where it gives the back as an option in the pause menu.

– Play/pause button should be used as a shortcut to start media when in focus

 

A topic that I think deserves developers’ attention is the TVMLkit. It is a framework that allows one to easily build client-server native apps using an XML based description (TVML) and leverage predefined templates that mimic the experience of many media apps on the Apple TV. The App Store and other Apple applications are built using it. It is particularly suited to media libraries and can also be used only for a subset of another native application: for example to browse the media library of a travel app. It allows one to easily achieve a UI very consistent with the overall tvOS experience. A lot of documentation is available from past WWDC sessions and the Apple TV Tech Talk Resources. I suggest that you dig into it if you plan to develop an Entertainment or media library app.

 

Another concept that is new to the TV App Store is the Top Shelf.

Top Shelf is the first row of the main Apple TV home page where users can pin their most used apps. By default when an app on the top shelf is in focus the top banner will show the static image included in the bundle. See below an example with Thumbspire’s game “Song of Pan”.

 

However it is possible to also display dynamic content, which then directly deep-links inside the app. This is a powerful tool for apps that can showcase interesting content (that can also be personalized to the user) on the top carousel even before being  opened. Check out apps like “iTunes Movies”  Zova andNewsy (below) as examples of how to use this feature.

 

Apple TV is still a platform in its infancy, with all the challenges that go along with it, but also with all of the opportunities that a new market and ecosystem can present. The initial data about the split of downloads and usage show a potential not only for games (that need to leverage the living room experience) but also for entertainment and media apps that can package and sell specific categories of content. I would expect the adoption of the device to grow steadily in the coming months. Developers should keep an eye on specific opportunities for their content and follow the evolution of advertising features that when added will likely boost the reach of free and freemium apps by enabling discovery via marketing campaigns.

Interesting times ahead!