Technologists and content owners have been chasing consumers around their living rooms for years. The advent of wireless technology should have made the movement of content from PC to TV easier, but
it didn't. Portable storage devices were another answer to the problem; networked media centers, set-top boxes, routers--all failed. I don't want to rehash history and the whys and why-nots of
technical mishaps and broken promises-- but suffice to say, it has been a battle for anyone's taking. Instead, let's ask ourselves, what do consumers really
want when it comes to mobile
content, TV, and the personal computer? I would argue, ease of use--both in consumption and management.
If success is measured by awareness and usage, then Apple's iTunes and the iPod is
surely a success. The company and its leader are masters at marketing--but more importantly, they are masters at understanding the mentality of the burgeoning mass consumer. I am going to invoke
a piece that I wrote close to a year ago, that I believe illustrates the point that I am trying to make--Apple knows the mentality of the mass consumer better than most.
It was April Fool's
Day, 1976 and Apple comes to be. After several product launches that rocked the industry and became the basis of what we know computers to be today, the Apple Macintosh was launched in 1984 with the
now famous Super Bowl advertisement based on George Orwell's novel 1984.
Fast-forward. The year is 2001, and there are approximately 2 million MP3 players in the U.S.
market--and many, many legal and illegal music services. But the market is going nowhere, fast. P2P hysteria, a global music market crash, and little-to-no mass consumer awareness, and along comes
Apple with a music player called the iPod. Two years later the connection from platform to service is made, and iTunes is launched. By the end of 2004, Apple had sold 200 million units. Three months
later, 300 million songs had been sold. Three months after that, the company says it has hit 460 million songs sold. In the course of 4 years, the iPod has grown to dominate the market with 76 percent
market share as of June, 2005 (Jupiter Research puts the number at about 12 million MP3 players connected in the U.S.). Apple has since become synonymous with online music (much to Sony's dismay), and
there are numerous derivations of the iPod that have flooded, and more importantly, been adopted by the consumer market.
So how does this relate to the living room? The consumer?
Apple's new iTV? Well, because all great businesses need critical mass before products have more than a 50-50 chance of succeeding.. If Apple is right, and they have been up-to-date with timing
of product releases, then one could argue that the iPod must have hit critical mass if the company is moving to movies and with iTV. The fact that TV programs for the iPod cost $1.99 didn't
mater. It doesn't matter that movies will cost between $5 and $15 It doen't matter that the iTV unit will cost $299. What matters is that the iPod for music and video has enticed, educated and
entertained an entire generation of mainstream consumers who, up until this point, didn't care what the term "mobile content" meant--and iTV is the bridge to help them get that content from their
hands and onto the TV.The company made the iPod and iTunes easy to use and easy to manage. And now that there is critical mass in the market, it is aiming to move all that content that
consumers invested in content back to the big screen. Isn't that what consumers want? You tell me.