OT Reply:
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the video on demand business is taking off. At least in the US, isn't 99% of what you could call video on demand made up of PPV movies delivered by cable service providers? (Not counting hotel porn.) Whatever video downloads the iTunes store sells are still pretty much at the noise level, right?
(Edit: I'm also not counting pirated video content on illegal file-sharing networks, which is probably where the real majority of "video-on-demand" is in the U.S.)
I remain skeptical about people watching videos on mobile screens, even if they're Ultra Mobile :-). I doubt young people are watching much video on the ipod video. They screw around with clips from video phones, but the more important video-on-demand direction is to large screens. This might well change over time as our brain-reaming culture reduces student attention spans further down into the millisecond range...then they may start using small screens and downloading Desperate Housewives. But for now I think it's the other way: home entertainment. Apple's first step into that area was supposed to be the mac mini (which they seem to have botched), not the Ipod. But if the content delivery infrastructure gets straightened out (a big if), a general-purpose computer with the right UI (simple, spare, there when you want it, totally unobtrusive when you don't) and the right physical media connectors could do a lot in an entertainment center.
So of course I could be wrong, but I see them coming out with stuff that supplements home entertainment centers and plugs into an existing large screen, rather than stretching iPod screens into competition with Pioneer and Panasonic and Sharp and Sony and LG and co.
Microsoft wants to do the same thing of course, but their carved-in-stone corporate cultural baggage of "everything is Windows" (viz., the fabulous Origami and their oblivion-seeking Entertainment Center PC's) makes it harder for them to come up with the right home-entertainment product. Everything isn't in fact Windows.
--QS |
