Does Apple’s “vertical integration” philosophy hurt it in the home entertainment market?

Apple likes to control the end-to-end user experience by integrating hardware and software. A good example is the iPhone (contrast this with Android-powered phones, for which Google only makes the operating system but third-party manufacturers such as Motorola and HTC make the devices). The home entertainment space poses a potential problem for Apple because in order to integrate vertically, Apple needs to make the TV itself. Techcrunch has even suggested that Apple would launch its own TV (as opposed to a set-top box) at some point and thus bypass the problem of fragmentation altogether… (more…)