Working Late, originally uploaded by Ed Weaver.This guy was always working (as a part owner of his MP3/MP4 manufacturing company, it should come as no surprise). This picture was taken during dinner around 10pm after a long day. The restaurant was the only place I saw a rat the whole week in Shenzhen.
Wow, it’s been a while again. For those of you that read this blog from time to time, I apologize. It’s been a bit of a whirlwhind.
I’ve started a new project, which has put me on an around-the-world trip, starting in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We are touring factories of MP4 players, whether flash-based or HDD-based. Flash capacity for most manufacturers in Shenzhen has increased dramatically, but not yet to the capacity of the iPod Nanos. For example, the highest capacity I have found that someone will sell me is 4GB, with an SD card slot for an additional 4GB.
HDD based manufacturers are able to support easily 20GB, and some 40-60GB. We have one supplier now that can support up to a 120GB HDD Media Player. That will hold a lot of music, movies, training, education, etc. That’s bigger than the HDD on my notebook I’m writing this post on!!
6 factories in 4 days. Considering Shenzhen has about 10 million people in the city, that’s a lot of traffic to navigate, my friends. And, we’ve collected “city” coffee mugs from some of the many Starbucks in Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Next stop, Dubai. Then on to London. Then home (Dallas). 17 days; 25,000 miles (give or take a few); 4 major cultural groups, 4 languages; Starbucks, McDonalds, Chili’s, Pizza Hut, KFC - they’re everywhere and the same.
Leander Kahney, of Wired Magazine posts earlier this past week an article discussing Apple’s new agreement with Apple (Corps that is) saying that iPods could become the new physical media medium. While that’s possible, why has no one else done it yet?
As you can see, the title of this post is somewhat sarcastic, as we do that for non-profit organizations all around the world - although not with music, but with a message that the non-profit “owns” and wants to get in the hands of others.
But, let’s explore the music side of this a bit. Apple would have to be reasonably prescient to pick which artists and “records” to load in order to sell them profitably. The beauty of today’s business model for Apple is that they don’t care what gets put on the iPods. Selling a device with content on it raises the price somewhat and may take it over certain “psychological” pricing barriers. Leander is careful to mention low-priced shuffles, etc, but in general, Apple is not in the low-price game.
Neat idea, but not sure it will happen. In the mean time, we’ve been doing this almost a couple of years now and we’ll be just fine continuing regardless of Apple’s content distribution strategy.
I guess it’s about time to discuss the iPhone. I’ve procrastinated on writing this post, due to the potential impact the iPhone has on the market and yet weighing the risks to Apple and other phone manufacturers. It’s somewhat difficult to be unbiased on either side of the battle that has begun.
First, let me say that the pictures of the iPhone (check here with my friend Blake Burris of CocoaRadio for some great firsthand shots) look great. The concepts of the OS and Software the phone is built around sound great. Watch Steve present the Keynote at MacWorld for details.
Question - how will we like typing on a completely flat surface (the phone screen)? It may take us a while to conform to a new manner of typing. We’ve all gotten comfortable over the course of our lives with the raised keys with “finger curves” and the feeling of pressing down to create a keystroke. I’m sure we can adjust, but wow - it will take some committed early adopters to stick with it!
Visual voicemail is new to cell technology, but old hat to VOIP users. I’ve had it for 3 years now - a great invention. Glad it’s finally coming to cell phones, although, since I have a Blackberry, technically I’ve been able to do this for a long time.
As usual, Steve blows people away, generally until they walk away and go…”hey - I’ve been doing this for a long time - how come he made it seem so special?” Welcome to the mystique that is Steve Jobs.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m looking forward to seeing this on the market and how it will force all the other manufacturers to get moving on some creativity. We, the consumers, will all benefit. Let’s be glad!
Engadget reports today that last night, RIM announced the initial release of the their first truly consumer model, the Blackberry Pearl, or the 8100 in geek speak. Hoping to snag one of these to demo at a conference at which I’m speaking later this month. Expect to see in on the shelves or in backorder mode as early as September 12!
This model includes a camera, MP3 and MP4 play capability and other nice things. That’s why you might see a long line…..
Engadget has a write-up here on a Blackberry 8100 which will be consumer-like in its feature set. Cameraphone, audio and video playback capability, etc - due to be out this fall. The site rumors that T-Mobile will be the first carrier selling it - my sources confirm that. T-Mobile has typically been the first to launch the more slim versions of the Blackberry product line, which uses predictive text for typing, instead of a full QWERTY keyboard.
This continues to confirm our opinion that the phone handset will be the media player of choice.
The real plus, with Blackberry coming out with this device, is that BB has had the best battery management of phones compared with other manufacturers. This will enable the media play capability to have some life along with the phone functionality. As a friend of mine said recently - if my iPod runs out of juice, that’s no big deal. But, if because of my media playing on my phone, my phone dies - I’m dead. Business-wise, that is. I assume….
Saturday, July 29, the NY Times had an interesting article that generated some buzz. You might look at the title of this post and wonder the connection between the three. Well, let me explain. There has been a lot of discussion both here and other blogs, articles, etc. regarding phones as media players. As a matter of fact, as many of you may know, I believe it will ultimately replace the autonomous mp3/mp3 player market.
3G wireless systems have been the buzz in the U.S. for 6 years or more. Will WI-FI or WIMAX over mobile handsets make 3G irrelevant? In the short term, probably not. In the long term? Maybe so. By demanding access to multi-media files on the handsets, consumers will definitely be pressing for this ability. I don’t think 3G has the download speeds to satisfy over the long haul.
As podcasting becomes more mainstream, this too will increase demand from consumers for true broadband (1.5 MBps download speeds) over their wireless systems that support their phone calls. I believe the downloads/portability drives this, rather than “streaming live” in the short term - in that too many things have to be perfect to support that. I can’t always get a perfect live streaming experience over a wired broadband connection today - I think the frustrations would be disastrous in today’s U.S wireless market.
That being said, Japan has been watching live video on their cell phones for 6 or 7 years now. South Korea appears to have at least 1 million receivers (as of June 2006) that have been sold to utilize a system that allows this.
Everyone is trying to get everyone else to adopt their standard. Standardization gets to be a problem when pride gets in our way. On top of that, we have business models that “guaranteed” a certain return to investors - they’re not going to be happy about watching that change. That is a macro discussion that will affect Wi-FI, podcasting, and phones. If the current wireless carriers push the consumers to accept less speed for downloads by lobbying against WI-FI or WIMAX adoption, then the consumer will suffer and the related adoption of media downloads of all types to phones will be delayed. Hmm. Big potential problem, don’t you think?
Well, this is not necessarily timely, nor is it very earth-shattering. July 19th, in announcing Apple’s Q3 earnings, Peter Oppenheimer makes a subtle, yet strong statement. He admits that phones will be the media player of choice eventually - but that for the time being, the iPod is player of choice. Can’t disagree with him there, at least in terms of U.S. adoption.
He teases the audience by insinuating that Apple will have a phone on the market that will be the best media player too. Will it be a good phone, though?
Nielsen/NetRatings gets us excited with a report showing robust growth in podcasting and then qualifies it in subsequent conversations when asked questions by, well, people who can ask questions. The right ones, that is. Frank Barnako pops the balloon here. Many interested parties are incredulous, such as Robert Scoble. I, on the other hand, think the report shows such a high degree of fascination with podcasting and therefore the need for speed in releasing the report that a lot of approvals got rushed. Facts didn’t get checked, appropriate comparisons were not made. I know none of us have ever made mistakes like that. 
Let’s look past the obvious errors, though and consider what makes a report like this hit the streets a review or two early. Something is going on in podcasting and everyone knows it - even Nielsen/NetRatings.
This is great news, as ESPN delivers a story about the Colorado Rockies baseball players using iPods and in-house video to improve their games. I believe that stories like this will finally begin to expand the current thinking about what podcasting can become. As we’ve discussed here before, podcasting is more than grass roots new media contributors - it’s another distribution channel for radio and tv content, and certainly is effective for training and education for people that would rather not be shackled to their computers.
Great news! Congrats to the Rockies for being early adopters.