OK, so Apple held its much-awaited “And the Beat Goes On” event today (as usual Ryan Block has the best live-blogging of Apple’s prized dog-and-pony show) during which Steve Jobs unveiled some major changes to Apple’s iconic iPod and iTunes line, all designed to juice sales come this holiday season.
Among the less than earth-shaking but still smart product upgrades:
—iPhone owners will be able to make ringtones out of any one of 500,000 selected songs downloaded from iTunes for $.99.
—iPod nano has been reconfigured in a new product called The Fatty, which features a 2-inch high-resolution screen capable of showing video. The new nano also features the cool “cover flow” display of album covers and comes equipped with three video games. The 4 GB version will cost $149 and the 8 GB version will cost $199.
—The original iPod, now called the iPod “classic,” has been overhauled. It’s a lot thinner, starts at 80 GB capacity and goes up to…160 GB! The $80 GB model will sell for $250, the 160 GB model will sell for $350. (All the new products, except the new iPod, are shipping this weekend, btw.)
The earth-shaking news is that the iPod will now feature a touchscreen, Wi-Fi access, a browser and is the same, larger size as the iPhone (the screen is 3.5 inches although the iPod is now a very slim 8 mm, encased in metal). The new iPod also features YouTube videos made available via Wi-Fi connectivity. It is, in essence, an iPhone without the phone part.
The new iPod comes in two configurations: 8GB and 16 GB, priced, respectively, at $299 and $399. The devices will ship in a few weeks.
Another significant new product announcement, although one unlikely to surprise existing iPhone owners, is the creation of an iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, which will enable iPod-touch model and iPhone users to download music to their devices instead of transferring the songs via computer-connected docking stations.
This development had been widely anticipated given that iTunes software already provides a feature for transferring songs from the iPhone to the computer. To give a marketing boost to the new Wi-Fi iTunes store, Apple and Starbucks have joined hands to give iPod and iPhone owners free access to the store at Starbucks’ outlets.
What wasn’t anticipated is the last bit of news Steve Jobs unveiled at the event: a price cut of the iPhone to $399. The highly praised and market-shifting device launched at $599 for an 8GB model and $499 for a 4 GB model (which now, apparently, will be discontinued because presumably everyone wanted the higher capacity model.)
Possibly because the iPhone threatened to overshadow Apple’s still-hot iPod product line, and given that the iPod now functions like an iPhone without the AT&T voice service, Apple’s price cut on the iPhone makes sense. Moreover, it seems likely that iPhone sales will now pick up as a consequence even as iPod sales get revitalized.
But, for reasons that have yet to emerge, Wall Street has taken a preliminary dim view of the price cut, sending Apple shares immediately down by at least 4%. One possible reason for investor concern is simply that the iPhone price cut is a surprise and Wall Street hates surprises.
Another possible reason for the lukewarm investor reception of Apple’s announcements (which are usually embraced with gusto) is that Wall Street thinks that iPhone sales, which are on track to reach one million this month, aren’t as robust as predicted, evidenced by the price cut. So much of Apple’s stock run-up over the past six months is due to healthy expectations for the iPhone and it’s ability to drive up Apple profits.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:26 PM | Print | Comments (0)Broadband service company and telco TV provider Verizon plans to launch a web-based reality TV show [correction: The show will be available online but will initially air on TV stations in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh markets as well as FiOS TV on-demand] called “My Home 2.0” with the goal of showing families how they can “realize the full potential of technology to improve their lives.” Modeled on the popular TV shows “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Mythbusters,” each program will take a “technology-challenged” family and retrofit them with the latest technology, home networking and gaming gear, while also, not incidentally, plugging them into Verizon’s FiOS Internet and TV services.
The show launches on September 12 with a Bucks County, PA family and will later feature at least two other Southeastern Pennsylvania families. The program will then move on to families in Pittsburgh.
This web video series makes no pretense at being unbiased, at least as far as broadband and Internet services go. It’s a product pitch for FiOS, but a clever one. Presumably the Verizon-produced episodes will impart other useful information to the millions of “technology-challenged” households out there, while selling the features of FiOS.
What’s interesting is that the cable industry, Verizon’s biggest competitor, has nothing nearly as sophisticated a video pitch that “My Home 2.0” sounds like it will be, even though cable is arguably more video-centric and better equipped to mount faux TV shows. Verizon, on the other hand, is facing an uphill battle to steal video customers away from incumbent cable and satellite providers, so the telco is obviously getting feisty.
Another example of Verizon’s “real world” video marketing moxie is a field trial the telco is conducting with a few employees who are experimenting with 100 Mbps connections. Verizon has spotlighted one employee’s experience with that drool-worthy but untested level of throughput.
Verizon has posted YouTube videos featuring the employee, has blogged about it on its own policy blog and even has gone as far as getting Om Malik to interview the employee. That’s what you call PR 2.0.
Again, despite a lot of hoopla over Comcast CEO Brian Robert’s demo of super-fast wideband cable modems at this year’s annual NCTA show, I haven’t seen Verizon’s main rivals promote their plans to offer blazing fast broadband service in quite the same way Verizon has.
In fact, I see little in the way of online video, blogging or other new communications activity on the part of the cable industry at all. In the meantime, Verizon is getting pretty good at this whole new PR 2.0 thing.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:12 AM | Print | Comments (0)The AP’s John Dunbar owes a seriously big tip of the hat to Multichannel News’ Ted Hearn, but more on that later. Dunbar has this piece today about just how ironically bad the Federal Communications Commission is when it comes to communicating its policy decision-making process.
An exemplar of how the FCC informs stakeholders of what it is planning is the recent spectacle surrounding the 700 MHz auction. Potential spectrum bidders, including AT&T, Google and a host of Silicon Valley companies, were up in arms over plans by Chairman Kevin Martin to make way for “open access” in new broadband wireless services made possible by the freed-up airwaves.
The problem was: Martin never made his proposal public and everybody was working off of press reports and rumors. Even when the FCC finally voted out a set of auction rules, they weren’t available in writing, at least initially.
This ridiculous situation is part of parcel of how the FCC functions. Clear answers are rare and, indeed, FCC rules dictate that agenda items — those issues to be voted upon by the Commissioners — are “non-public” information. Employees can get fired if they disclose anything the FCC is planning.
But the AP’s Dunbar is merely picking up on a pair of great articles by Multichannel News’ Ted Hearn that ran in the trade pub during early August under the headline “Federal Incommunicado Commission.” Hearn’s first piece focused on how reluctant FCC Commissioners are to answer press questions. Kevin Martin, in fact, has held only two press conferences since assuming the Chairman’s position in 2005.
As Hearn notes, Martin won’t even let people know too far in advance when the next Commission meeting will be held, a departure from previous FCC practices.
Hearn’s second piece discusses how FCC staff are tight-lipped about the public appearances of the agency’s commissioners. This veiled behavior is not limited to the Republicans at the FCC. Democrat Michael Copps has not met with reporters since 2006. His fellow Democratic commissioner Jonathan Adelstein can’t remember when he last held a press conference.
The FCC’s poor communications skills are evident all the way down to the agency’s website, that most public and constant of communications tools. Have you ever tried to search filings or decisions at www.fcc.gov? I’ve been conducting research at the Commission’s web site for years and years and my heart sinks every time I have to do so.
Let me put it this way: without a “Docket Number,” the average user can’t find anything on the FCC’s website. Even with a Docket Number, users have to choose from among eight different types of databases and if, by chance, the right database is selected, the results can be a garbled, gargantuan mess. Getting a hold of the Docket Number is not the easiest thing in the world for the uninitiated, either.
On top of the searchability problems (and they are vast, vast, just trust me), nothing at the FCC’s website is in HTML, beyond the basic informational, static shell. Everything is published in Word (!) or Acrobat, and sometimes .txt, so even if a user finds the relevant document, it has to be downloaded or viewed in just plain text format. A real nightmare.
In any event, what all this adds up to is that the FCC, the independent regulatory agency charged with regulating our nation’s communications industries, is one of the worst communicators in all of Washington.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:17 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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