Random Musings:

CES 2011: Shake-ups? Shake-outs? Business as Usual?

How to net out the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show?

Huge. Had the feel of a pre-recent recession show. Much more crowded than in the previous cople of of years.

Still, the show, announcements, products in vendor booths, etc. may not bode well for the next year or two.

THE Problem:  too many vendors with too many products. Take tablets. Apple has redefined the category and owns it. Period. No one will catch them. There are so many vendors large and small  chasing the non-Apple market. Too little to late for most of them. Lots of money has and will be invested in this race for second place. The prognosticators are likely to point out that second place in a rapidly growing market can be a good a good position to own. Maybe. To win second place, an app store is not enough. Apple's iPad benefts substantially from the whole Apple ecosystem including, of course, the iPhone ecosystem. Developers already know how to develop for the ecosystem and seem to have had no problems extending iPhone apps to the iPad plus creating new apps that take advantage of the iPad's form factor, etc. And each company playing in the Android space has typically customized their development and app environments. So one can't quite implement once, deploy many.

So what will life be like for the 3rd and lower placed tablet vendors? Probably minimal consumer uptake and minuscule support from the developer community.  I'd hate to be reviewing the tablet business unit's P/L statements in a year or two..

Similarly, how many distinct handsets can be profitable? For manufacturers? For carriers? Some will no doubt have great succeses. But for those out of the money, life will be most difficuilt in 2011 and 2012.

CES 2011: Interoperable Software Platforms for Connected Devices?

Cisco, Netgear, Samsung, and several others announced software platforms designed to integrate smart TVs and the myriad of other smart (or dumb) connected devices. Each vendor is proud of their vision, their software platform, their interfaces.

I've been around long enough to remember the days of the TCP/IP Dan Lynch's Interop conference / trade show in the early days when not all devices spoke the same network protocols or spoke them incorrectly. For a period of time these shows were one essential component that got us today to a really interoperable network with 12 billion connected devices, globally.

So will the the smart device vendors and the network infrastructure vendors and other participants work together to enable consumers to really plug-and-play in the home and to personalize their content aggregation regardless of which device? Location? Social network? That's the vision of each of the major industry players. Except it seems like they are demanding that it be their platform that needs to succeed.

Some like Cisco recognized that "coopertition" (Chambers did not use this term) will be an essential component of successfully implementing their software platform strategy. Cooperation was a clear element of Chamber's message.

I'm wondering if we need a new "smart devices interoperablity show?" With a bit of tweaking, CES might play that role. But a new, smaller show with interoperability and individually customized content aggregation might fill an important need. Who will be the next Dan Lynch?

Airport dreaming.

Cisco Press Conference

John Chambers is a class act. Period. (And he's reputed to be dyslexic as am I.)

He's talking about video in the home and the highly connected world.

The keys are a new software platform for connectivity, management, and applications. Cicso' strategy is based on building partnerships with other industry players. The goal is to completely reinvent the TV experience.

Consumers are now leading the way, not business. In bringing consumers, service providers, and content providers, timing is key.Cisco thinks that now is the time.

Historically: Analog -> digital -> networked

Now the task is to respond to onsumer expectations by creating broad partnerships to bigin the effort to integration the currently 12 billion connected devices, a number that is expected to grow to at least 22 billion in about a decade, plus or minus.
Broadcast media

Video is the new voice.  Easy, simple, predicably reliable.

Put another way, "any to any" with proper authorization.

If the network is the platform, Medianet--announced today--is the software architecture for connectivity, easy of use, management, and, almost forgot, proper authorizion.

No one has said it explicity, but DRM has become as ubiquitous as the net itself. High quality (1080p) has been the driver. The studios have insisted on locking the doors. It's as if the rallying cry is:

DRM is dead. Long live DRM.

 

LG press conference

The 2011 theme is "smart devices". "simply smarter".

Appliances, phones, entertainment devices for the home are key markets.

Making major investments in R&D, quality, and manufacturing.

Smart TVs: whole new platform. New UI, better content sharing, apps. Supporting DLNA. Support for premium content providers. New content search functions across content platforms. New app store.

New 3D technologies for 2011.

In mobiles, new phone 1080p video with HDMI out. A home theater in your pocket

Support for 4G/LTE.

(posting from iPhone; will correct / update later)

Netgear press conference

Netgear showing new desktop storage device, router, and HD Media Player.

Highlights:

Patrick Lo, founder, CEO, Chairman. 15th anniversary of the company.Today implementing the original vision of a connected universe.

Pioneered Wifi in the home. 8 new products introduced at CES. 3 have won prizes @ CES.

2011 the tipping point for Internet connected devices entertainment devices in the home.

Mobile and entertainment devices will surpass computers in the home.

Connectivity through out the home and beyond the home is the new requirement.

Extend home wifi to outside the home through metro WiFi, 3G, 4G.

Connected TVs.

3DHD Wireless home theater networking kit. A pair of bridges. Jitter-free 3DHD.

NeoTv 550 organizes all your content automatically; multiple media formats.

Home Media Server: backup all media on single server / backup device.

(Blogging from my iPhone; will correct / update later)

Renting Textbooks

It's no secret that the college textbook publishing business is in trouble. The declinging economy, student and faculty resistance to high prices of new text books, and the used textbook market are among the factors making life difficult for publishers. Now, according to a NYTimes article, publishers are having their base business attacked by textbook rentals. 

Chegg.com is a venture back startup that is building a growing business renting textbooks to college students.

With demand for good deals on textbooks running high, Chegg’s success comes in large part from being able to address those inefficiencies. While Chegg primarily rents books, it is also essentially acting as a kind of “market maker,” gathering books from sellers at the end of a semester and renting — or sometimes selling — them to other students at the start of a new one. That provides liquidity to the market, said Yannis Bakos, associate professor of management at the Stern School of Business at New York University.