I went to a company's presentation on Tuesday where they talked about how well sales are going. This company is known for producing hardware but have discovered that hardware needs infrastructure. Now half of the company's sales are for online services. That is a big shift in business.
The Apple iPod is probably one of the first instances where it became clear that hardware is no longer enough. When they released the original music player, Apple knew that they also needed a marketplace where users could go to buy content for the new device. They then invested in the infrastructure necessary to create an online music store. Furthermore they did the job well and have grown it to also include software for their mobile phones. Google had no choice but to match that investment in order for Android phones to even be considered an alternative to the iPhone.
Now we see the same thing happening for other consumer electronics companies. When video game companies released the first versions of consoles, all games came on some sort of media. Nintendo created cartridges while Sony started with CD ROM's. The latest versions of video consoles continue to support Blu-ray disks but both Microsoft and PlayStation have online stores where you can purchase digital copies of games.
Think about other consumer-electronic devices. How long will it be before Cannon and Nikon create online services that interact with the next-generation camera equipment? Companies should be looking at this new revenue stream and embrace it. Those that do will succeed while those that don't will cease to exist.
Showing posts with label iPod. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPod. Show all posts
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Christmas Music
This year I have tried to be a bit more proactive when it comes to helping my wife set up all of the Christmas decorations. Yesterday we put up the outside Christmas lights and today we put up the Christmas tree. As we were working today, my wife wanted to listen to Christmas music.
In the past my wife has kept a ton of Christmas music on her iPhone. For some reason she took it off and so she left it up to me to figure out how to get some Holiday music going while we put up the tree. I thought about setting up a Christmas station on Pandora. However that would have required finding speakers for my tablet or smartphone and so I pulled out an old boom-box with a built-in CD player. My wife then located about 20 Christmas CDs and we put one in.
It worked quite well and we enjoyed the music for about 40 minutes. Then the music stopped. We were still working on decorating and so my wife changed CDs and we kept going. Once again we were good, but only for about 40 minutes. It took us several hours to set things up and the music helped speed the process along. The only problem was that it felt like we were constantly changing CDs.
I'm not sure what is more annoying: listening to commercials every few songs that come with the free version of Pandora or having to swap out CDs every 40 minutes or so. Ultimately I decided that MP3 players like the iPod have really spoiled me and it is tough to go back to older music formats like CDs.
In the past my wife has kept a ton of Christmas music on her iPhone. For some reason she took it off and so she left it up to me to figure out how to get some Holiday music going while we put up the tree. I thought about setting up a Christmas station on Pandora. However that would have required finding speakers for my tablet or smartphone and so I pulled out an old boom-box with a built-in CD player. My wife then located about 20 Christmas CDs and we put one in.
It worked quite well and we enjoyed the music for about 40 minutes. Then the music stopped. We were still working on decorating and so my wife changed CDs and we kept going. Once again we were good, but only for about 40 minutes. It took us several hours to set things up and the music helped speed the process along. The only problem was that it felt like we were constantly changing CDs.
I'm not sure what is more annoying: listening to commercials every few songs that come with the free version of Pandora or having to swap out CDs every 40 minutes or so. Ultimately I decided that MP3 players like the iPod have really spoiled me and it is tough to go back to older music formats like CDs.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Doing it Right
I am not staying at a particularly nice hotel in Japan, yet I am impressed with the features in my room. There are a bunch of tiny details that really make my stay comfortable. I don't think the Japanese woke up one day and said, "We are going to make the ultimate hotel room." Instead I imagine it was an iterative process where they asked themselves, "How do we make our hotel more comfortable than our competitors?" That is how Apple has had their success as well as Microsoft.
Nobody remembers versions 1 and 2 of Microsoft Windows. I do because I had one of the original copies of Windows 2. It was a horrible product that was a cross between DOS and the original Macintosh. Rather than having pretty icons, you had a listing of file names that you could click to access. Nobody bought it and so Microsoft realized they had to make it better. Then came Windows 3.0 and we saw that Microsoft learned their lesson. It would be nice if they continued to make things better instead of simply changing things.
Apple is similar. They released their first iPod and then continued to refine it as other competitors entered the market place. When Microsoft introduced their attempt at an MP3 player, Apple was already ahead of them and continued to distance themselves with a better product. When solid-state storage became affordable, Apple continued to offer the larger capacity disk-based iPods, but also introduced a line of smaller and sleeker ones as well.
Successful technology companies will always ask that important question, "How do we make our product more appealing than our customers?" and not simply, "How do we make money?" Now if I could just figure out how to get a heated toilet seat in my bathroom at home.
Nobody remembers versions 1 and 2 of Microsoft Windows. I do because I had one of the original copies of Windows 2. It was a horrible product that was a cross between DOS and the original Macintosh. Rather than having pretty icons, you had a listing of file names that you could click to access. Nobody bought it and so Microsoft realized they had to make it better. Then came Windows 3.0 and we saw that Microsoft learned their lesson. It would be nice if they continued to make things better instead of simply changing things.
Apple is similar. They released their first iPod and then continued to refine it as other competitors entered the market place. When Microsoft introduced their attempt at an MP3 player, Apple was already ahead of them and continued to distance themselves with a better product. When solid-state storage became affordable, Apple continued to offer the larger capacity disk-based iPods, but also introduced a line of smaller and sleeker ones as well.
Successful technology companies will always ask that important question, "How do we make our product more appealing than our customers?" and not simply, "How do we make money?" Now if I could just figure out how to get a heated toilet seat in my bathroom at home.
Monday, November 2, 2009
A Tale of Two iPods
A little while ago I had a very good contact at Apple Computer. He was my counterpart while I was working for one of their software partners and was a very nice guy. Every time I would visit him, he would take me to the employee store and tell me I could get anything I wanted using his significant discount. Most of the time I didn't want to impose upon his generosity and so I left empty handed. However once I felt it would be good for company relations if I made a token purchase. I decided on a top-of-the-line iPod.
I had always wanted an iPod even though I had an MP3 player. I opened the box on the flight home and inspected my new toy. It was really quite the bargain but still wasn't in the family budget. I couldn't expense it even though I only purchased the gadget as a goodwill gesture between Apple and my company at the time. I decided that the best tactic was to tell my wife I got it for her. If she didn't want it, then I had a new toy.
Little did I know that my wife had wanted a new iPod as well and was happy with the gift. She put her music on the device and left me the task of making it fit in the family budget. With a little creativity, things worked out and I didn't have to sell one of the children.
Then my wife got a new Samsung mobile phone that doubled as an MP3 player. She thought this would be great because she could put all her music on her phone for those jogs with the dog. My oldest son saw this as an opportunity to get a free iPod. As soon as my wife started using her phone, he promptly wiped out my wife's music and loaded it up with his own. I had my iPhone at this point and my son knew I wouldn't try to take it.
Unfortunately the Samsung phone isn't nearly as convenient as an iPod. My wife would buy songs from iTunes but not be able to convert them to MP3 files so she could load them on her phone. After several months, she had had enough and wanted her iPod back. Naturally my son felt victimized because he was loosing his music player. He resisted and resisted but finally decided that there were too many privileges he enjoys and doesn't want any of them revoked.
My son has the same phone as my wife and decided he would try to use that. Unfortunately the iPod has a 60 GB capacity while his phone only holds 1. His PSP can also play music and it has 4 GB of memory. Since he only has about 3 and a half gigs of music, the PSP would actually work for him. The only problem is that his battery is old and lasts about 10 minutes before dying. So he started looking at getting new battery for the PSP.
Saturday I get a call from my son who was at the local Kmart. "Dad," he said, "Kmart has the best prices on PSP batteries but it is still $30." I suggested that he look at the price for a new memory card for his phone. It might be cheaper. A half hour later he walks in the door and shows me his new memory card. Not only was it 4 GB, but it also came with a mini USB adapter so he can plug it directly into any computer's USB port to load it up with songs. It was half as expensive as the battery and so my son was happy.
As for that little problem about not being able to play songs purchased on iTunes, my son figured out a way around that. It involves creating a CD with purchased songs for use in a regular CD player and then converting the songs to MP3s. Leave it to a teenage kid to figure out how to make everything work.
I had always wanted an iPod even though I had an MP3 player. I opened the box on the flight home and inspected my new toy. It was really quite the bargain but still wasn't in the family budget. I couldn't expense it even though I only purchased the gadget as a goodwill gesture between Apple and my company at the time. I decided that the best tactic was to tell my wife I got it for her. If she didn't want it, then I had a new toy.
Little did I know that my wife had wanted a new iPod as well and was happy with the gift. She put her music on the device and left me the task of making it fit in the family budget. With a little creativity, things worked out and I didn't have to sell one of the children.
Then my wife got a new Samsung mobile phone that doubled as an MP3 player. She thought this would be great because she could put all her music on her phone for those jogs with the dog. My oldest son saw this as an opportunity to get a free iPod. As soon as my wife started using her phone, he promptly wiped out my wife's music and loaded it up with his own. I had my iPhone at this point and my son knew I wouldn't try to take it.
Unfortunately the Samsung phone isn't nearly as convenient as an iPod. My wife would buy songs from iTunes but not be able to convert them to MP3 files so she could load them on her phone. After several months, she had had enough and wanted her iPod back. Naturally my son felt victimized because he was loosing his music player. He resisted and resisted but finally decided that there were too many privileges he enjoys and doesn't want any of them revoked.
My son has the same phone as my wife and decided he would try to use that. Unfortunately the iPod has a 60 GB capacity while his phone only holds 1. His PSP can also play music and it has 4 GB of memory. Since he only has about 3 and a half gigs of music, the PSP would actually work for him. The only problem is that his battery is old and lasts about 10 minutes before dying. So he started looking at getting new battery for the PSP.
Saturday I get a call from my son who was at the local Kmart. "Dad," he said, "Kmart has the best prices on PSP batteries but it is still $30." I suggested that he look at the price for a new memory card for his phone. It might be cheaper. A half hour later he walks in the door and shows me his new memory card. Not only was it 4 GB, but it also came with a mini USB adapter so he can plug it directly into any computer's USB port to load it up with songs. It was half as expensive as the battery and so my son was happy.
As for that little problem about not being able to play songs purchased on iTunes, my son figured out a way around that. It involves creating a CD with purchased songs for use in a regular CD player and then converting the songs to MP3s. Leave it to a teenage kid to figure out how to make everything work.
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