What Would Apple Do to the TV or Set-Top Box Market?

"The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy," Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said. "The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free, So no one wants to buy a box."

"That pretty much undermines innovation in the sector," said Jobs. "The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it."

"I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby," Jobs said. Of course, if Apple were to tackle the TV appliance business, you can be sure they would tear up the existing framework. It isn't clear whether it is the display (the TV) or the set-top which is the bigger problem.

Some of us would say it is the set-top, simply because the "best" TV in a world that requires a decoder is a "dumb" device that does not interfere with any of the features the "set top" might want to provide. The big problem with that approach, though, is that most people get their "TV" service from a company that imposes its own "set top box" on the user.

To really break through, an attacker would have to build a box so elegant and interesting, so capable that it replaces the box the service providers demand. That requires quite a lot of business logic, and quite a few agreements with service providers that might love to be rid of the capital expense a decoder requires, but do want the customer control, marketing and content security advantages the box provides.

But Apple might be the only company, inside or outside of consumer electronics, that could figure that out.

Don't Be So Sure Apple Won't Start Selling TVs

Social Media Works for Small Business

A survey of 3340 largely small business managers and owners finds the respondents believe social media has helped them close business. Some 72 percent  of marketers who have been using social media for more than three years report it had helped them close business. More than half who spend 11 or more hours per week also believe they have gotten the same results.

Of course, that likely is a self-selecting sample. Almost by definition, a business that continues to invest energy and time in social media believes it works.

About 48 percent of the self-employed and small business owners with two or more employees believe they have closed business because of social media.

Even with a minimal time investment, the vast majority of marketers (81% or higher) indicated their social media efforts increased exposure for their business. Owners of small businesses (2 to 100 employees) were more likely than others to report greater exposure was a direct result of using social media. (89 percent of respondents reported benefits).

By spending as little as six hours per week, 52 percent of marketers reported lead generation benefits with social media.

Small businesses were more likely than others to strongly agree that qualified leads were generated (21% strongly agreed, compared to 14% or less with other types of businesses).

Also, a significant percentage of participants strongly agreed that overall marketing costs dropped when social media marketing was implemented. The self-employed (59 percent) and small business owners with two or more employees (58 percent) were more likely than others to see reductions in marketing costs when using social media marketing.

The largest group who took the survey was self-employed (33 percent) followed by people working for a company with up to 100 employees (30 percent). Some 19 percent of people taking the survey worked for businesses with 100 or more employees.


Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2011 from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.


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netTALK "DUO" Now on Dell.com

netTALK.com's Voice over Internet Protocol service is now being sold at Dell.com. As with some other appliance-based approaches, the device plugs into a router and derives VoIP service directly, without requiring use of a PC. The service offers free nationwide calls to any phone in the U.S. and Canada from anywhere in the world.

The suggested retail price for the devise is $69.95, including the entire first year of phone service and only $29.95 each year after.

I'm not among those who think voice now is a true commodity, like sugar, flour or unleaded gasoline. Most of us can point to instances where we use one form of voice rather than others, to communicate with different people, with whom we have different relationships, in different places, about different things.

A unit of one true commodity is literally interchangeable with a unit of that same commodity produced or delivered by any other entity. Skype video between Asia and North America is not interchangeable with mobile service used locally or within a single nation. Both of those usage modes are different from a desktop business phone using IP telephony between various global locations, or a consumer's home phone used mostly in "inbound" mode.

All of those use cases are different from a Facebook or other web app that is enabled with voice.

Nor are the revenue cases similar. A minute of use on a high-end telepresence system might not cost any more than a simple peer-to-peer Skype video session. But the total cost of ownership is quite different. A minute of mobile voice does not generate the profit margin of a minute of domestic landline voice, in most cases.

That said, it might be hard to find an observer who really believes voice services, overall, are high-margin products anymore. They can be, but the overall trend is towards less margin. A mobile customer with a 400-minute monthly bucket, costing $40,. who only uses 100 of those minutes has an effective cost per minute of 40 cents a minute. That would be a high-margin product.

A user on a prepaid plan with calls to India at one cent a minute would be paying less, after adding in any per-call charges, and depending on the length of any particular call.

netTALK DUO Now Available on Dell.com

S&P lowers US debt rating

S&P has downgraded the outlook for US government debt to negative, from stable, while reaffirming the current AAA rating. In plain English, the rating agency is telling the U.S. government to get its fiscal house in order, pronto, or face a downgrade that will materially affect the interest it has to pay to get people to buy its debt.

“We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policymakers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium- and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013; if an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation is not begun by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns.”

The downgrade does not make the United States Greece, or Portugal, not yet. But it is a step in that direction, as hard as it might be to conceptualize. In other words, the S&P downgrade is a warning to cut spending and deficits yourself, or have it done to you, against your will.

S&P lowers US debt rating

Top Smart Phone Attributes, Ranked by Smart Phone Owners

Lots of things are important to smart phone buyers. In addition to operating system or device ecosystem, itself a change from past value, buyers say they care about the application variety and device features. Other issues, including device price, are of lesser concern.

There are lots of potential reasons why price is not a bigger factor, probably chief among them the availability of device subsidies. Most users also can figure out that the cost of service over two years far outweighs the investment in a device, and most often, those devices are subsidized in any case.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 Video

This video, from the Vietnamese tech blog Tinhte.vn, shows the Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Honeycomb. It's in Vietnamese, of course. But you get a feel for the user interface.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 Video Leaks

HP TouchSmart Tries to Bridge PC and Tablet