• Business Week, Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:45 AM

Business Week Online's Diane Murphy explains the durable popularity of TiVo--how consumers have warm feelings about the brand, how they say they cannot live without its beloved services, how it has changed the way people watch TV. Then she asks why, in the company's entire history, it has never earned a profit. Good question. To which no answer is given, except the proposition that TiVo, like so many companies before it, established a toehold in a new market and cleared a path for an army of well-heeled competitors. Today, a number of other outfits, including the big cable companies, offer inexpensive DVRs, and their software, while perhaps not as friendly as TiVo's, is deemed adequate by many users. TiVo, fighting back from near extinction in an effort to survive, is partnering with others (Yahoo! for one) and rolling out a stream of new features. Consumers continue to love virtually everything about it. Its brand recognition remains high and loyalty among its customers is impressive. Unfortunately, none of those things assure that TiVo will remain a significant player in the industry it helped create. "The fear among analysts," writes BW's Murphy, is that TiVo, even under the best of circumstances, could be "steamrolled by the competition."

Read the whole story at Business Week »