i think Tivo is getting desperate. they sent me an offer for a free Tivo Series 2 (40-hour).
But that free offer comes with either a full-year commitment requirement (more if it is a second unit, works out to close to 2 years at the multiple-unit $6.95/mo rate) or a payment for life-of-the machine, no? At least that is the offer they sent out recently.
They could be trying to crank the subs knob, or it could be they're going to introduce higher-capacity models.
From frequent retail checks throughout the last holiday season, my perception is that there were no shortages despite a massive uptake in sales. Inventory planning in a hypergrowth market is never simple, so it's also possible that they have a glut of 40-hour units that aren't as popular in the stores as other model (relative to what was planned for).
But in the long-run, they're not really a hardware player (and overall have had to subsidize that, I believe), and as they head into profitability, the bread-and-butter has to be the sub counts and recurring revenue stream from subscriptions. "Giving away" those 40-hour units while locking in subscription revenue ain't a bad way to go about it.
It's easy to throw the damned if you do/damned if you don't books at Tivo (i.e., "they're desperate, giving away the units" or "how can they compete, charging for their DVRs while cable companies give away the machines?").
In this case, it's the "damned if you do."
However, I wouldn't be so sure that the move with the 40-hours is a sign of desperation. Does common sense tell you that this is a stagnating market, or that cablecos are making huge headway? No, far from that. We have high double-digit growth and the acknowledgement by cablecos (with Comcast's actually coming into the Tivo camp) that things aren't going as smoothly as they'd like. Tivo, OTOH, continues to hit sub targets Q after Q. And, DirecTV continues to add massive numbers of Directivo units 1-1/2 years into the NDS boogeyman period - and I have a DirecTV ad right in front of me with the little Tivo dude on it.
Fortunately, we can simply wait and see how things unfold.
Andre |
