Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category

Impact of $.99 TV Show Rentals from Apple TV and Amazon on Web Content

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

I think that this new price model that being promoted by Apple and Amazon might trigger some of these trends in the future –

  • Initial Trigger Point – Some/Limited (which is what happened) Free to air broadcasters will immediately jump in to offer content for $.99 – to test waters and see if they can make more money via the “over the top” distribution than what they are making currently – which is not a whole lot  other than some ad revenue.
  • Step #2 – early adopters/ passionate fans shifting towards this paid access model – purely for convenience. Even though the same content is available through network sites, the opportunity cost of accessing favorite shows via such dedicated boxes on their big screen TVs is much lesser than having to jig their laptops to their TVs or worse watching on smaller screen devices. While we all acknowledge that “Content is King”, Convenience has the potential to dethrone the King in this case.
  • Step #3 – Once the # of users pivots – Broadcasters reduce the amount of content they make available via their web properties. They might only push content that is not as popular and divert popular content towards the rental/paid models.
  • Step #4 – With depleting supply of popular content on the web sites, casual fans and certainly less tech savvy viewers lean towards these boxes/paid services. That increases the wielding power of Apple, Amazon, Netflix and the like. There will be some market share acquisition shenanigans around this time to lure, grow and retain their user base by reducing the price points or bulk price points, tiered services, yada, yada.
  • Step #5 – This is when rest of the content industry follows suite – as this is turning out to be a viable distribution/business model for their content.
  • Step #6 – This is when the disruption in the SP driven premium content packages could kick in – mainly with the tug and pull amongst 1. Premium content providers, 2. Cable MSOs, 3. the new generation providers such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, the like and 4. New generation content users. Cable MSOs might address this new market via their “TV Everywhere” offering but they would not be only game in town, by this point

All thoughts are my own and not my employer …..

Posted in Ads, Amazon, Apple, Apple TV, Broadcasters, Competition, Convergence, Digital, Free to Air, Internet, iTV, Netflix, Over the top, Web, Web 2.0, Web Video | No Comments »

Publisher App Store via App Store in future through iPhone? …maybe…

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Did you ever notice that the “App Store” icon is listed with other Apps on the home page instead of at the bottom along with Phone, Mail, Safari and iPod? Did Apple decide to leave the “App Store” Icon along with other Apps because of lack of space at the bottom – too hard to put the 5th icon in there? Then again, they also short changed Settings, iTunes, Messages and Camera – by leaving them along with other Apps.

Regardless of where the App Store Icon is, I wonder if there is a future, where brands and publishers can create “Publisher Stores” – similar to “App Store” – where they Catalog all their own branded Apps – conveniently located in one location – for users to select all and download all and pay for all them at the same time.

For example Sony Music Entertainment has deployed 6 iPhone Apps on the App store. Instead of downloading each of those 6 Apps separately, wouldn’t it be cool to download all Sony’s Apps with one click?

Enter Publisher App Store !!!!

With Apps on App Store reaching 100,000 in next few months, it becomes critical for Apple to consolidate as well as make it easier for iPhone users to download Apps. Users don’t have to search for different sub brands multiple times. If you are looking for all super hero comic apps, all you need to download is Marvel App Store.

Then again, does the Publisher App Store need to be a downloadable App OR could it be an aggregated list of apps via a microsite available through Apple’s App Store?

Download or webapp – doesn’t matter – there is a huge need for such a feature. Its long due …..

Why limit this concept to just grouping within a publisher? Aggregator can group Genre specific Apps in one location and give option for their user to search, download through one interface.  There could be App stores for all free casual games, all card games, all music apps and all news apps ….

Ideation

There is a start up idea right there …..what are the challenges? Well, for one, Apple might not approve such an App!!!!

No harm in giving it a try. Create a shell App and let all these brands customize the Shell App the way they want to and list out their on deck Apps, Icons, descriptions, and hook it up to iTunes store.

Even if Apple doesn’t approve such an App, at least publishers can start creating such Microsites and let user’s download ….Disney has around 12 iPhones Apps on the App Store. Couldn’t Disney or Sony or some of these big brand names build microsites by partnering with Apple – giving options for fans to download all the Apps in one go?

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Posted in App Store, Apple, Apple TV, Apps, Constant Innovation, Handset, Innovation, iPhone, mobile, Product Evolution, Productization, Publisher | No Comments »

Digital TV Vendors might borrow few ideas from iPhone market model …..right around the corner

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

iPhone and its smartphone clones have rejuvenated the mobile industry in the past few years. Not only that, consumer electronic (CE) vendors might be taking a page or two from the smartphone market, very very soon …

Enter Widgets and Apps on digital TVs.

Last year at CES, most of the CE vendors have offered Widgets and Applications that come built in and can run with the help of network connectivity.

Does this mean, five years from now, one might have 100s of applications, widgets and gadgets running on their HDTVs in their living rooms ….. I see the signs all over the place ……This is equivalent to “Decoder cards” for the 1930′s era television viewer.

med_subscription_tv

The biggest challenge or issue for this to happen until now is lack of network connectivity in these TVs along with less software footprint and so forth …..

While current CE vendors offering limited “premium” App/Widget capabilities (from the likes of Netflix, Ebay, Amazon) as a customer acquisition strategy rather than an up sell or increased revenue potential, the tables might turn in a few years, where DTVs with unlimited Apps and Widget support are bound to command a premium over DTVs without any such capabilities.

While the current generation is spending more time on the web, TV still continues to command a health share of attention in the media consumption verticals. In fact, a research done by Nielsen concludes that more U.S Teens are spending as much if not more time in front of the boobtube as of 2008 …..

teen-TV-use

With that kind of end user loyalty, the future generation TVs with Widgets, Apps and Gadgets are well positioned to steel the thunder back from the PC Monitors, in the near future ….

PS: Note to PCs and Laptops – the party is coming to an end ….. pack up and clean up …..

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Posted in Apple, Apps, CE, Consumer Electronics, Customers, Gadgets, HDTV, iPhone, Widgets | 1 Comment »

When Brand's interests are competing against their Customers interest?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Have you tried to open Yahoo! Mail using Google Chrome Browser? Try it ….try sending an email ……

Have you tried searching for the keyword “Google” on www.Bing.com? Try it ….. I urge you …..

google-vs-microsoft

With the recent spat of controversy – Apple pulling down Google Voice from App Store, what kind of decision process do Brand’s go through when their interests are against their’s user’s interest?

Did someone within Google Chrome product teams consciously made a decision not to optimize Yahoo! Mail for Chrome browser? Or Maybe they just thought it was not important enough?

Brands and organizations competing with other brands for customers has existed since commerce existed – but has there ever been a situation in the past history where Brands had to deal with competing interests of their customers – especially when their competing brands are involved?

I went on a tail spin searching Wikipedia on any historic precedence of what we are living through …….but no luck.

We have managed to coin few new words such as “Frenemy” that sort of addresses the strange relationships the current generation brands and corporations deal with but “Frenemy” doesn’t really cover the context I am talking about – where a brand’s product delivers subpar experience or limits access to their end user when the experience in question is a competing brands product or solution. While some of this might fall under anti-trust laws but there is no law against smaller and insignificant misdemeanors I am talking about. Can regular anti-trust laws be extended to smaller issues as well?

At the end of the day, do brands assume that by providing a subpar experience of a competing brands’ product, will their customers abandon the competition and adopt the brand’s own offering (in case of Google Chrome, Google hopes users will abandon using Yahoo! Mail and switch to Gmail on Google Chrome?)?

It worked for Microsoft in case of Internet Explorer during the First Browser Wars” but will this work for Google OR Microsoft in case of Bing.com? Hard to imagine.

While FCC is investigating Google Voice App denial on Apple Appstore, who will tie the bell to optimize Yahoo! Mail on Google Chrome?

PS: By the time I pressed this blog, someone pointed to me that even keyword “AOL” doesn’t result a whole lot of results when you type in www.bing.com

Posted in Anti Trust, Apple, Bing, Competition, Google Voice, iPhone, Legislation, mobile | No Comments »

Venture Capital Backed Mobile App Startups Remain Predominantly Mobile OS Agnostic | The ChubbyBrain Blog

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I wonder if someone has done research on how successful multiple platform focused mobile app businesses are compared to single platform focused start ups? Conventional wisdom of a VCs suggest to hedge their risk by focusing on more than one platform, but are the rewards that much higher? For example, more platform support = longer development cycles = more COGS = more sales efforts = higher revenue compared to just single platform focused businesses?

Is the primary driver in multiple platform strategy is to hedge the risk OR double the returns?

http://sidharth.posterous.com/venture-capital-backed-mobile-app-startups-re

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Posted in App Store, Apple, Apps, Cross Platform, Investors, iPhone, mobile | No Comments »