Fred:
Thank you for taking the time to give well-thought out answers, as you always do.
With regard to DVD: it has the POTENTIAL to be huge, but it has to solve several problems you touched on:
1. It has to be as convenient or more convenient than VHS tape for the consumer electronics market. People want to be able to record (albeit infrequently). Hollywood does not like this, because once DVD is recordable, it will be SO EASY to make copies. And I think Hollywood will continue to stand in the way.
2. Lots of content has to be available. The Catch-22 is that people won't buy DVD until the content is there, and the content producers won't bother until the demand is there.
With regard to Creative playing in the Internet space: Sure, if the bandwidth were there, Creative could take advantage today. But we all know that the bandwidth won't be there for years. So, creative and smart companies learn to deal with the bandwidth as it exists now and for the next several years.
Imagine what Creative could have done with their brand name recognition if they had used that to bring sound over the Internet !
WebBlaster. But instead, RealAudio dominates.
Why? Because Creative only sees themselves as a hardware company. They could be in the software business, but they never will. They are just not creative (pun intended).
This reminds me of a company I interviewed with several years ago, Televideo. One day, a LONG time ago, Televideo was a very successful terminal maker. They now make PC monitors and cheap clone sound cards. I asked them why they didn't do such-and-such in software, spend some of the little money they had left and invest it in software, internet development, etc. The response was "We are a hardware company and we will always be a hardware company. We will never be a software company."
They continue to be a hardware company that continues to lose money every quarter (many, many years running). They continue to try to do all the "macro" things like figure out a way to make their unimaginative hardware a little faster and a little cheaper to build.
I am not saying Creative is as bad as Televideo, just similar in many ways. |
