Why no BBC iPlayer?

Question

I'd been plugging my iPhone into my tv to watch the BBC iPlayer, and were frustrated that even the new Apple TV didn't included it. However I assumed that the BBC simply weren't willing to work with companies like apple to include it in devices like the apple tv.
Then I had to buy a new tv in a hurry so I hadn't looked into it thoroughly. I was amazed when the sales assistant said said a lot of people choose Sony rather than panasonic because of the iplayer. Enough said, we got a Sony.
How did apple miss the boat this much? They should have been the first to offer services like this. If it's now being built into tvs then apple are too late.
Apple really should start taking the apple tv more seriously. It may be impossible to make it perfect because of difficulties working with proprietary regional tv services, but there is a vast amount the could be doing to make it better.

Answer 1

I personally feel there's a rather blinkered approach to AppleTV which is far too US centric.
In the US Netflix and TV Show Rentals may be worthwhile selling points but are not available for most international customers, which seriously detracts from it's international appeal as there are no localised services to make is preferable to many other devices other than itunes integration.
YouTube access on a device is old hat, even if it appeals.
Even in US many devices have Netflix access, so AppleTV does not do anything unique there.
The established players in the AV market all seem to be releasing their BluRay players/STBs with iPlayer access, YouTube etc, many TVs have these features built in so without competing features and a heavily itunes Store/iTunes centric model which many don't want to use, AppleTV will have a problem getting a foothold without something unique. Look at how many DVD/BluRay players simply offer USB playback of a variety of formats - average consumers like these features yet Apple won't allow you to directly connect a USB drive even if it were technically feasible.
The reality is there are probably far too many services like iPlayer/4od etc globally for Apple to support all of them individually unless they work via a common core web technology i.e HTML 5 as we won't see flash on AppleTV.
Apple presumably just does not have the resources currently in AppleTV development to target each country with tailor made video services.
So what does Apple have up it's sleeve?
Airplay could really open things up if you could stream iPlayer from your phone/iPad, but it still needs that portable device - given mass sales of iPhones/iPads it's a big potential market for AppleTV as an accessory.
Secondly the new AppleTV is iOS based so it will be feasible to allow all sorts of plugin apps that may be popular in different countries, but it would presumably rely on people like the BBC creating these plugins and would they do so to work on targetted devices - given that they did enable HTML5 based players and if we think of downloadable podcasts for many radio shows, it might happen.