2025-0327 [CNET]: Apple Adds Severance Lumon Terminal Pro to Store. No, You Can't Actually Buy It
CNET interviewed Professor Tsay about this instance of reverse product placement, and the goals of Apple TV+.
From the article:
Dr. Andy Tsay, a professor of business and analytics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, says that Apple is uniquely positioned to pull off a crossover like this that doesn't feel "ham-fisted" in the way it can when other hardware manufacturers attempt product placement (or reverse product placement, as in this case).
"I certainly think it's a good idea," Tsay said, "It's kind of an idiosyncratic combination of circumstances, a combination of conditions, where you've got this company that sells this iconic hardware that happens to have a TV studio that makes these shows that target a particular type of customer."
Tsay said that what Apple is doing with its Apple TV Plus service, spending billions to produce content some will consume on its devices, has been done before. It goes back to the days of General Electric making content for radios and TVs that the company also sold to customers.
"The idea of Apple creating the ecosystem to drive the hardware is not a new idea," he said. "They've just executed it brilliantly, and they've managed to do it in an industry where other competitors don't have the profit margins to create a slush fund to do this."
He said Apple TV Plus is just one step toward Apple's long-term goal of building its service businesses.
"It's an even higher-margin business than making hardware," Tsay says, even if Apple TV Plus subscriptions aren't yet subsidizing what the company spends on content.
As for the Lumon Pro Terminal itself, Tsay says he's a fan. He imagines it's the kind of machine Apple co-founder Steve Jobs "at the peak of his powers" would have designed in his iMac candy color phase, "if he could have gone back and redesigned the Apple IIe."