How print media missed the bus on charging telcos for accessing content

Is it too late to change the model to make cable/telcos pay for print content the way they do for video content?

It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline. And those government figures do not take into account movies, music and television shows bought through iTunes, or the data plans that are increasingly mandatory for more sophisticated smartphones.

Nick Carr:

As an example of the prevailing trend, the US Department of Labor reports that over the past decade (through 2008) the amount an average American spends annually on newspapers and magazines has dropped by about 40%, from $97 to $61, but the amount spent for Internet access has more than quadrupled, from $49 to $222:

What if Adobe spent as much time on optimizing Flash for OS X as they do on PR

Maybe they’d get their little app running on the iPhone?

The company told me today that in December, there were more than 7 million attempts to download Flash from Adobe.com from iPhones and iPod Touches. That number is up from 3 million download attempts from iPhones and iPod Touches in June.

Awesome – have they done anything to make sure that Flash doesn’t suck on OS X (iMac, to start with)?

Retrevo’s foul ball

The Macalope documents the atrocity:

Our friends at Retrevo are ginning up hits to their little shopping site again, this time with a survey that says “iPad Hoopla Fails to Convince Buyers”.

Which is an odd title because that’s exactly what it did. Retrevo makes a big deal of pointing out that the number of people who said they weren’t interested in an iPadnearly doubled from before the announcement to after it. Wow! The iPad is doomed!

What Retrevo “oddly” (ironic quotes intentional) doesn’t call out is that the number of people who said they would like to buy an iPad tripled. Not only that, the number of people who said they were interested but needed more information also went up. Equally shocking is the fact that the number of people who said they hadn’t heard of the iPad and weren’t interested shrank from 35% to 18%! The number of people who said they “need” an iPad (as opposed to “want” – nice phrasing, Retrevo) went up as did the number of people who thought maybe they “needed” one.

That part doesn’t fit the doom & gloom narative

Never fret, I am sure we can rely on Rob Enderle and Scot Moritz to use Retrevo’s double instead of the triple.

Songs are disappearing from Zune libraries

Via Consumerist:

Ars technica reports that a Microsoft employee wrote on a Zune forum, “We are investigating your reported missing albums indicated in this post—and will come back to you as soon as we understand why they’re missing.”

Which takes me back to this:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wed 4/30/2003 10:46 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Dave Fester
Cc: Will Poole; Christopher Payne; Yusuf Mehdi; David Cole; Hank Vigil
Subject: Apple’s Jobs again.., and time to have a great Windows download service…

Steve Jobs ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better Licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music.

This is very strange to me. The music companies own operations offer a service that is truly unfriendly to the user and has been reviewed that way consistently.

Because you offer something friendly and easy to use?

Toyota lost quality control in its drive for market share .. Gee, I wonder if tech firms can learn something from that?

I am guessing this is similar to what Apple would have faced had they listened to all those pundits’ recommendation to lower prices, release a netbook, yada yada yada. The drive for market share and lowering costs can be deadly!
Dude, have you seen Dell lately?

Toyota executives set an ambitious goal in 2002 to own 15 percent of the global auto industry by 2010, meaning it would surpass General Motors as the world’s largest carmaker. To get there, it would have to grow by 50 percent. It would have to build new plants in the United States, China, and elsewhere in Asia, and introduce dozens of new models.

Toyota managed to win bragging rights as the world’s biggest car company. But that focus on rapid growth appears to have come at a cost to its reputation for quality, creating an opportunity for others to potentially take back market share they lost to Toyota.

Something to keep in mind the next time a Joe Wilcox or Paul Thurott bring up market share as a counter-argument to Apple’s disciplined niche focus.

I suspect Toyota would rather have Honda’s market share and profitability right about now.

Sucking on fumes

Growlaw via 9to5Mac:

Here’s what Bill Gates really had to say about Apple’s iTunes Store in 2003.

“Steve Jobs ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.
“This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better Licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music.
“This is very strange to me. The music companies own operations offer a service that is truly unfriendly to the user and has been reviewed that way consistently.”

He added in a somewhat visionary moment, “I am not saying this strangeness means we messed up – at least if we did so did Real and Pressplay and Musicnet and basically everyone else.”(Editor’s note, yep. so they did.)

Jim Allchin’s response is charming:

“1. How did they get the music companies to go along?
2. We were smoked.
jim”

Microsoft is the tech equivalent of smog filled LA.

I just saw a NY Times ad for weekly online subscription for $3.45 a week

$3.45 a week? $180 a year? I pay half that for the WSJ (both online and print). And, I have to use Adobe Air?

If that is the subscription plan, forget it.

NYT op-ed asks why Microsoft no longer brings us “the future”

I am sorry, when was the last time they did? Their core competency is partnering to extend their reach (OS licensing, PlayForSure, Windows Mobile, Windows OEM ..). They haven’t had innovation as a focus and never will. All this angst about lost innovation is bull – they never had it to begin with.

But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

The primary reason Microsoft is lost is this is a new world where companies are eschewing the technology middlemen and selling their products directly. Microsoft cannot partner with anyone to deliver their products to consumers (except, of course, their traditional monopolies). Besides, their never having that direct consumer touch has clearly crippled their understanding of consumers needs and preferences (hence, Vista and XP – let’s remember XP SP2 was rushed to solve a whole slew of security issues).

That’s not so to say they aren’t trying to leverage their core competency (partnering: tying search to Verizon phones or partnering with Yahoo etc.) but they the fast pace and churn of direct delivery is killing them.

Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?

Not so. Nobody gives a shit about the anti-trust case. Microsoft lost credibility by constantly imitating competition instead of leading the market when they had huge lead – Apple releases a graphical OS, Microsoft releases a graphical OS. Apple does a personal handheld, Microsoft build a personal agent, AOL had dialup software, Microsoft came up with MSN, Google bought Blogger, Microsoft did Space, Google bought YouTube, Microsoft bought SoapBox, Adobe had success with Flash, Microsoft had to do SilverLight, Apple did iPhone, Microsoft did Surface.

You cannot be a reactive company and catapult into being an innovative company.

Sony is on the iPad case … we will wait, won’t we?

Digital Daily:

That is a market we are also very interested in. We are confident we have the skills to create a product. Time-wise we are a little behind the iPad but it’s a space we would like to be an active player in.”

— Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda on the Apple iPad

No worries, take your time, Oneda San. We’ll be waiting with unabated breath. By the way, have you talked to a John Koller in your company? FBN:

“Apple’s entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony,” Koller said in an interview. “When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP.”

Sucking fat and surfing the web at the same time

The miracles of technology:

She can cut so much more fat with the iPad.