Apple's Amazing New iPod with Video
Take Steve Jobs (please!). Even when he comes late to market with a product, he claims he invented it. The other day I was listening to Jobs spout on CNBC about how, unlike case with the portable music market (which he's willing to admit he didn't create but merely "revolutionized" with the iPod), there is no portable-video-player market. So Apple, he said, with its new video-capable iPod 30GB is, more or less, inventing the market and now he's going to see what happens.
Golly, I guess Jobs missed the memo about portable media centers. Roughly a year ago, Microsoft and its partners rolled out a new operating system and series of handheld devices that could play music and display photos and video (TV and full-length movies). The products were billed as the ultimate portable media devices—go-anywhere, do-anything consumer electronics wonders. The Creative Zen, easily the best of the bunch, was a slick-looking black unit that offered a brilliant and fairly large (for a handheld device) screen.
Despite the efforts by Creative, Microsoft, and Samsung, not to mention Sony with its portable PlayStation (PSP) and a slew of no-brand Taiwan-made devices, Jobs may be right. There is no portable-video market. All the initial hoopla and the subsequent release of players from Archos, Yepp, and others was followed by general consumer disinterest. Almost a year later, virtually no one is carrying the gadgets—a far different scenario than with MP3 players. What went wrong? And how are Jobs and the new iPod 30GB with video and iTunes 6.0 about to resurrect this stagnant market?
Golly, I guess Jobs missed the memo about portable media centers. Roughly a year ago, Microsoft and its partners rolled out a new operating system and series of handheld devices that could play music and display photos and video (TV and full-length movies). The products were billed as the ultimate portable media devices—go-anywhere, do-anything consumer electronics wonders. The Creative Zen, easily the best of the bunch, was a slick-looking black unit that offered a brilliant and fairly large (for a handheld device) screen.
Despite the efforts by Creative, Microsoft, and Samsung, not to mention Sony with its portable PlayStation (PSP) and a slew of no-brand Taiwan-made devices, Jobs may be right. There is no portable-video market. All the initial hoopla and the subsequent release of players from Archos, Yepp, and others was followed by general consumer disinterest. Almost a year later, virtually no one is carrying the gadgets—a far different scenario than with MP3 players. What went wrong? And how are Jobs and the new iPod 30GB with video and iTunes 6.0 about to resurrect this stagnant market?
posted by Frank Eckdall at
3:01 PM
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