Logitech Slashes Pricing On Google TV Box To $99, But More Content Is Needed
This morning, Logitech announced their first quarter results and in addition to their CEO leaving, the company said they were cutting the price of their Revue unit to $99, down from the original $249 price tag. (As of the writing of this post, Logitech's website is still selling the Revue for $249 when you add it to your cart.) While Logitech has never said exactly how many units they have sold to date, the company did say that sales for the device totaled $5M in Q1 of this year, which would mean about 15,000 units sold in that quarter. Someone from the company also told me that they sold less than 40,000 units last year, so if you combine Q4, Q1 and Q2 sales, it looks as if the company has sold around 60,000 units to date.
While cutting the price of the Revue down to $99 now makes the device affordable, there still is not enough content available through the Google TV platform to make consumers really need the box. Google hasn't added a lot of new content to the Google TV platform since it launched and until they do, there is not a lot of incentive for consumers to use it. Currently, you can get Netflix, Amazon Instant Video (not Prime streaming), NHL, HBO Go and YouTube, but that's about it for mainstream content. Even the Google TV website doesn't really highlight what content is available for the platform, you have to go under the "spotlight" section to find a list.
If Google were to buy Hulu and start offering a YouTube Premium subscription service, that would make their Google TV platform a lot more valuable and bring some much needed content to the system. But until Google does something to bring a much larger selection of content to the platform, it's going to be very hard for Google to get a lot of traction in the market and Logitech is not going to sell many Revue units, even with the price being reduced to $99.
The real play for Google TV and the future of the platform is embedding it into TVs, something Google is well aware of and is working hard at. When that happens and more TVs on the market have Google TV built it, Logitech's Revue unit will really no longer be needed.
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