[LINK] a new media distribution company?

[Kim Holburn]

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-goes-where-the-portals-failed-its-the-hardware-stupid/

> Apple Goes Where The Portals Failed: It's The Hardware, Stupid


> Six months ago an Apple analyst told me he thought the company's  
> long-term goal was to become the internet's cable TV company. I  
> didn't get it then. I really get it now. Most think of Apple as a  
> computer or consumer electronics company. I think that's becoming a  
> means to a much bigger end: becoming a giant news, entertainment and  
> communications network with Googillian ambitions.
>
> Most of its money still comes from selling computers, iPhones, iPods  
> and iPads. But with its move into advertising, the spike in revenue  
> from selling iPhone aps (four billion downloads and counting), as  
> well as its move to take a percentage of book and other content  
> sales on the iPad have NEW MEDIA COMPANY written all over them. It  
> is moving to build the self-perpetuating effects that come with such  
> a platform with astonishing speed.
>
> The portals like Yahoo tried this. Their mistake? They didn't make  
> iPhones or iPads. Turns out, desktop and laptop computers and  
> existing cell phones are lousy at consuming content. Everyone keeps  
> running into the "lean forward lean back" problem. Computers are  
> lean forward devices, but lousy entertainment machines. TVs are  
> great to watch a movie on but lousy at doing email or web surfing.
>
> The iPhone and probably the iPad are the first devices that truly  
> solve this fundamental problem of media convergence. Probably  
> because of their portability and touch screen, we are just as happy  
> to do email and web surf as we are to lean back and watch a video or  
> a movie with handheld, touch-screen devices.
>
> I'll leave the goodness or badness of Apple's ambitions to others.  
> What is not debatable however is that what Apple is doing has the  
> potential to be a colossally huge business.
>

> Cable TV companies’ are always constrained by their capital costs  
> (laying and maintaining all that cable). Apple has none of those  
> worries. I appears that for the moment all it has to do is keep  
> making killer devices and software and the rest will take care of  
> itself.
>
> Devices like the iPad and iPhone generate audience, which attracts  
> advertisers (a business Apple just said it was plunging into), which  
> attracts content. It doesn’t hurt that Apple has proven to be one of  
> the few online platforms capable of charging for digital content.
>
> We can debate the pros and cons of Apple’s proprietary standards —  
> as we have, and are — endlessly. As a matter of principal I don’t  
> like them. Practically, they make things so easy that I’m not sure I  
> care. Maybe Google’s model — control the software and let everything  
> else take care of itself — will prove to be a better model.
>


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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