It used to be that a hotspot
referred to a happening place. If I say “Hot Spot” to most
of the readers here, the first thing that pops to mind is a
wireless hub. Before Pentium M chips, the biggest thing in
wireless, excluding cell phones, text messaging on cell
phones, were Palms and Blackberries. Of those, the
Blackberries have shown greater lasting power, moving out of
corporations to the mainstream wireless carriers.
Many of us have wireless networks at work and have come to
take for granted the freedom they provide. The average user
doesn’t experience the productivity gain that employees on
wireless networks do, and as a result, they are more likely
to come into contact with wireless through what we might
call gadgets.
Regardless how a user runs
into a wireless network, connectivity is growing – in reach
and importance. The way to get and keep a user is by making
your product an integral portion of their life. Microsoft
knows this and built their empire by owning a controlling
interest in users’ connectivity experiences. While they
spend a lot of effort owning the business market,
Microsoft’s roots still lie in the consumer market. Watching
what they venture into shows what aspects they find
important. Besides personal computers, they have at some
point tried, TV, PDA, and game consoles – all areas that
contain some level of connectivity and potential
integration.
Next up for Microsoft is
Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Centers. Their corporate
site proclaims, “Experience the power and convenience of
having all your favorite video, music, and pictures at your
fingertips anywhere, anytime with Portable Media Centers.”
They continue by adding that you can, “Take digital
entertainment from your computer with you on the go,
including recorded TV shows, downloaded videos, home movies,
music, and photos. With Windows Mobile software that
features an easy-to-use, familiar Windows XP Media Center
Edition interface, Portable Media Centers let you enjoy
immediate access to all of your favorite entertainment —
anytime, anywhere.”
Portable Media Centers offer
an attracting proposition. Consumers love their media, but
media players are currently fragmented and not connected.
People spend much of their life with downtime. Being able to
fill that void adds a lot of value and creates an attractive
proposition, one that could integrate a company in a user’s
life. That will only happen though, if it makes sense to the user;
it makes sense to the user when it truly fills a need. In
typical Microsoft fashion, they have tried to fill a need
their way, not by understanding what the customer wants.
The Portable Music Centers can
play and store digital media files. Everyone who has tried
TiVo with Digital Video Recording loves it because it
fills their exact needs. In an ideal world, the
PMC should be an extension of TiVo. Going on a trip and
being able to take with you movies and shows that you
haven’t seen- that’s what users would want to use the PMC for.
They won’t want to interface with a computer using a
different means to get their TV shows. The same holds true
for video. Users will want to store their home made movies,
but they will really want to store movies that they record
or own.
In addition to TiVo, many
people use Netflix. With PMC, users must subscribe to a
completely different service. Whereas it could be argued
that trying to work with Netflix or Blockbuster Online would
make the most sense. Instead, Microsoft forces users to
choose between services that meet their needs and those that
compete with it. The user ultimately either pays double or
changes their way of doing things, both of which conflict
with fulfilling the need. Microsoft can succeed in these
cases when their shear leverage pushes out the existing
alternatives leaving theirs as the only choice. In the end,
more people lose than win.
Connectivity can make our
lives more enjoyable and more efficient, but the user
benefits most when such connectivity gets implemented in a
Google-like fashion – what the user wants – not in a
Microsoft fashion – increased segmentation in order to drive
out existing players and force users to go from what they
want to no choice in how they get their wants serviced. The
real fun, though, comes in seeing how long it takes before I
can get a free* Personal Media Center.
Jay Weintraub
