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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Thursday, October 28, 2004Steve Jobs is Wrong About Mobile VideoOther Web loggers are arriving late to the game when declaring that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is "wrong" about people wanting portable video (I've been writing about this for many months). However, believing that Jobs won't promote "ripping" video because he's also the CEO of the Pixar movie company is overly simplistic. As always, the issue is a lot more nuanced than that.1. As mentioned above, Jobs' ties to the movie industry (Pixar especially). This is the mentality that sunk Sony's recent MP3 players: Because Sony owns a record company, it cares more about protecting its artists (and its record business) than it does about making good devices for consumers. And as for Apple, remember, there is no such company as Apple anymore. There's just "Steve Jobs Inc.," a company that sells Macs and iPods. Soon it will just be iPods. 2. Apple's relatively limited R&D budget means the company must focus, laser-like, on specific projects, so it logically picks the most viable ones first. Music? A no-brainer, and Apple did it right. Photos? They'll get there. But video (and even more to the point, subscription services) is hard work, and you need partners. Which leads me to ... 3. No one is interested in Apple's small platform, and Apple isn't interested in wooing them. The nice thing about the "Microsoft digital media platform" is that it's an ecosystem of interdependent pieces. Microsoft can offer media companies a platform--Windows--that ones 95 percent of the market. What can Apple offer them? Let's see: The latest versions of Mac OS X command about .5 percent to 1 percent of the market. That's not enough. However, if Apple is successful enough with the iPod (and again, it's getting there), they might be able to parlay that into deals with the CinemaNows of the world. Microsoft got there first because of their platform strength. Also, Microsoft tends to work with others. Apple tends to go it alone. They need to suck it up and start partnering more frequently, even if some of those partnerships don't result in immediate dollars. It's called investing in the future. 4. Apple can't afford to launch a huge failure. If Apple has one more high-profile failure, it's all over. So the company is taking very decisive baby steps while evolving its platforms (iPod and Mac). It can't afford the Microsoft approach, which is to throw as many possible solutions as possible at the wall to see which ones stick. That's why you're not going to see a radical Apple smartphone platform, for example. That's why there's no Apple living room set-top box. That's why they didn't do a tablet Mac. ---- Update: The day after first writing this post, I'm also struck by the interesting side effects produced by Apple's situation. Because it can focus on only certain products, those products tend to be of very high quality (and, not coincidentally, are generally pretty expensive when compared to the competition). In the case of $2000-$3000 computers, the Mac was doomed from the start: That's a luxury item pure and simple. But it's fascinating to watch the iPod succeed, because a $300-$600 item is a luxury so many more people can afford. Someday, business schools will study these trends. [ Posted at 5:25 PM | Permalink ]
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