Apple made over $1B on the sale of around 10M apple TV units in 2013

Apple's TV generated more than $1 billion in hardware and content sale fiscal year Ceo Tim Cook just revealed. That makes Apple TV the company's fastest growing product according to the analysts by Horace Dediu. Apple has long reffered to its set-top box for television sets as a "hobby" since it still pales when compared to phone and computers. But as sales grew Apple Tv was more recently upgraded to a "Beloved hobby" And at apple shareholder meeting today, Cook said "Its a more difficult to call it hobby these days".

All told , Dediu estimates that Apple has told 28 million TV sets till now since the product has debut since 2007. That compares to 8 million set-top boxes sold by its nearest competitor,Roku since 2008.These devices,which plug into television sets for watching internet video,have been viewed as interim solution in the evolution toward fully connected TV sets.But set-top boxes have proven surprisingly popular as streaming video services like Netflix have improved and cable television hasn't. That's in part because the software on internet-connected TV sets, which should preclude the need for a set-top box,is generally hard to use.

Apple is said to be working on an update to Apple TV this year,with better hardware and offering integration with some cable television serices in the United states.That would still be a far cry from Apple's real ambition of releasing a full fledged television set of its own.