I am an investor in Gemstar (GMST), whose dynamic future (I hope) lies in their electronic program guides (EPG) used in televisions. The guide is a database of content programming that can be sorted by all sorts of criteria. The consumer uses the EPG to determine what to watch, what to record, and to record it with one-button programming (since none of us are smart enough to program a VCR with any degree of reliability.)
I've been thinking that an EPG is an enabling technology. But now I'm thinking differently. Tonight I read a major portion of Gorilla Game again and have decided that an electronic programming guide is primarily an applications technology, not an enabling technology, but with an interesting enabling twist. More about that later. First, back to basics.
The book clearly shows that an enabling technology tells the hardware what to do, enabling the opportunity for applications to ride on top of it. Systems software embedded in a microprocessor is a classic example of an enabling software, telling the hardware what to do, without which there would be nor opportunity for word processor, e-mail, and spreadsheet appllications. A disk drive is a classic enabling hardware, enabling the place to store those
apps and the data they manipulate.
Applications technologies are those with which the end user interacts, such as the spreadsheet and word processor apps. Using that definition, it's pretty difficult to dispute that an electronic program guide is an applications technology.
(My apologies if I should not have included the above basics considering the informed readership of this folder.)
But it's not quite that simple, at least not in my mind in which nothing is ever simple. :) The authors of the book focused on computer technologies because that is their area of strength. You might have noticed that they hardly ever delve into consumer technologies, even those within their area of expertise, the computer biz. It's apparent that their natural hunting grounds are in the business-to-business area of commerce, not the realm of
consumers.
Taking that into account, I've done some additional thinking about an electronic programming guide as a consumer product. I've come to the conclusion that it is a hybrid technology that combines both the applications and enabling aspects, with an emphasis on the applications end of things.
There's no question that an EPG is an applications technology because it's the consumer who interacts with it. The interesting twist, however, is that the consumer uses it to tell the hardware what to do. Just as the software in your digital microwave oven is used by the consumer to tell the oven what to do, the EPG is used by the consumer to tell the television and/or VCR what to do.
There is a fascinating ramfication about that. The typical enabling technology has the strength of the product manufacturers behind it as part of the value chain. The typical applications technology instead has the strength of the end users behind it as part of the value chain.
In the case of an EPG which I proprose is a hybrid between the two, it has the strength of both. In the early stages of the product adoption cycle the manufacturers will be the mainstay of the value chain's strength. As adoption of the product moves out of the tornado and onto Main Street, the consumers will take over in the vale chain's strength. Not a bad combination, huh.
Comments anyone?
--Mike Buckley
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