Koo’s Corner

I had a handful of commercials pegged for commercial of the week, but none seem to be on youtube. Following up on my ode to Apple yesterday I thought I would go with the new ad for the new 3g Iphone.

Nothing special but its great that they position it as twice as fast and half as cheap. The positioning will lead to a lot of upsells.

Its been a hectic week at the new job as well as settling into my new abode for the summer in Alameda. I actually don’t really move in until Monday. With that in mind here are some blog topics that kind of slipped by the wayside the last week.

- CBS purchased technology focused internet media network CNET last week for 1.8 billion dollars.

- I had an article published last week on Bucknuts on my interview with Alex Coates, the young man posting incredible Buckeye highlights videos. Alex is great at what he does, and it was good to bring attention to him as most people knew him only by his youtube alias, Lexco44.

Below are 2 of his videos

- The tech blogosphere is buzzing about the likely eminent release of the Apple 3G Iphone. Said to be announced and released in the coming weeks, technology enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting official confirmation from Apple at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9th.

- Netflix users with a $9.95 monthly plan or more can now buy the first Netflix hardware device similar to Apple TV or Vudu, which I own and endorse. Netflix will be releasing other devices this year through partnerships with LG and others. This box is made by Roku, and is somewhat limited in its functionality compared to Vudu or Apple Tv. However its the first box that is not pay per view but rather a monthly service.

I am going to guess, the above Roku box, will sell only modestly until the LG Netflix box comes out later this year. I’ll be shocked if I ever see one of these in flesh at someone’s house.

- I have been planning on blogging about the airline industry’s demise the past 6 months. 3 notable bankruptcencies, a safety scandal, new losses in customer satisfaction, and record losses all make the list as notable signs of the industries implosion.

I knew changes were in store, but was shocked to see American Airlines announcement that they will begin charging $15 for checking your bag.

Thus far none of the other airlines have embraced this decision. Hopefully American will do away with this god awful policy and find another creative way to try to avoid going bankrupt.

Didn’t see much I liked in the way of new commercials this weeks but was impressed with the new Iphone Bet Commercial. Apple’s marketing across all their product lines are targeted, recognizaeblle, and consistent.

Although its overkill, their market shares for all their products have been trending up as more and more consumers begin to think Apple for phones, mp3 players, computers, etc.

The consistent messaging and simplicity of their ads are converting hoards of consumers into Apple users (my company now allows Macs, and we constantly give away Apple products as prizes at events).

The below ad is another great Apple ad, as it showcases a common use case for the Iphone. This ad campaign is approaching one year, but still remains effective as viewers are continuously seeing the robust functionality and ease of use via hypothetical use cases.

This ad was received very positively by my friends as we disagree, bet, and look stuff up via computer or Iphone on almost a daily basis. Unfortunately I recently lost a $25 bet surrounding what year Mike Miller was drafted.

I absolutely love my Iphone and have recommended it to a lot of friends have gone onto positive experiences with it as well.

Initially I had some gripes, but over time the various software upgrades alleviated most of my issues. However there is still one glaring defect that mocks me on a weekly basis.

The Iphone does not get MMS (Multimedia messaging Services) messages like pictures and video. For whatever reason its just not part of the functionality of the Iphone.

Initially this really didn’t bother me that much as MMS messages sent to me could be accessed via a website called viewmymessage.com. Whenever a picture or video text message came my way I would get a message alerting me and telling me the necessary credentials to use on the website to view the sent message.

The only problem. Viewmymessage.com doesn’t really work. The majority of time the website relays the following message after a lengthy delay.

A quick Google search shows that the problem is pretty consistent and widespread.

Apple forums excerpts below

Haven’t seen a commercial that really impressed me this week but will go with a commercial that was effective on myself. For awhile now I have seen various auto makers (Ford, Lincoln, Mercury) push their new Microsoft powered Sync system technology. I typically ignore products like On Star, Tom Tom, Sirius Radio, etc as I don’t want to spend disposable income on something that I do not feel will add much value to my in car experience.

The Sync system is the collective work of a handful of companies that I view as being a step too slow in keeping pace with their competitors. Microsoft, Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury have all had a rough time in recent years sustaining market share compared to the likes of Toyota, Honda, and Apple.

But I have to give them credit on this commercial and the Sync system in general. At first I dismissed most of their advertisements as they were not that compelling but more importantly I was not in the market for a car. The commercial below uses slap stick comedy to get the viewers attention before giving a high level tutorial of their new product.

This commercial served as the final straw as my curiosity got the best of me and I did my homework on this new offering and must say I am rather impressed with the new product. Sync would allow all audio files to be stored on my Iphone or other MP3 players to be played on my car’s sound system via voice commands. Sync also would use blue tooth to enable my Iphone into a hands free car phone utilizing my car’s sound system. Not a bad idea as I believe talking on your cell phone is now illegal in California unless its on a hands free device.

Pretty solid product and a well thought out marketing blitz that will likely appeal to the younger more technology savvy crowd. Hopefully this type of innovation will continue as its very unlikely that my next car would be a Ford, Mercury, or Lincoln.

In just under a month I will be attending an event in whichOracle, MySQL, and Sun Microsystems are set to have a presence.

Today all three companies made noise with Sun acquiring open source database software maker MYSQL for $1 billion and Oracle acquiring BEA systems for $8.5 billion.

2 interesting moves. I am sure the blogosphere will chime in with opinions a plenty. MYSQL was seen as the next logical candidate out of the handful of open source companies to go public. Sun Mircosystems has been one of the most open source friendly larger entities so it seems like a good fit. Its great to see Sun investing heavily in open source and embracing the idea that the LAMP stack is enterprise ready.

MacWorld

Steve Jobs made a slew of announcements yesterday at his keynote at Macworld. A ultra thin laptop, some new ipod and iphone features, and a variety of other less sexy product announcements.

To me the biggest announcement was Apple’s addition of movie rentals to their Itunes store and the revamping of Apple TV. Earlier I discussed Netflix’s forray into the digital living room with their partnership to LG and how it will affect Vudu. In that blog I predicted that Apple would make a move into this growing market.

“While their are a handful of other companies making waves in this space, something tells me Apple will dive head first into this space and steal a lot of their thunder. AppleTV has been a disappointment thus far, but you can

I have long contemplated blogging on this topic but decided to chime in now as I see this holiday season being HD DVD’s last stand. Let’s recap for those of you who don’t know squat about Blu Ray and HD DVD. I thought by now most people were somewhat familiar with this next generation format war, with the amount of advertising circulating about both products. To my surprise one of my more plugged in and knowledgeable friends confessed he was unfamiliar with Blu Ray and the format war.

Similar to how VHS won out over Beta and Laser Disc lost out to the DVD, a third generation format war of what technology is the chosen video media format has been raging for over a year. Sony’s techology, Blu Ray (or sometimes Blue Ray), is more expensive but holds higher amounts of memory compared its competitor HD DVD. Sony rolled the dice on bundling in a blu ray drive into all PS3’s which have been shipping since November 2006. At the time blu ray players were going for around $800 while PS3’s were a much more functional alternative for $600.

Through out 2007 new HD DVD and Blu Ray players hit the market with the price for both players dropping a hundred bucks or so every other month with HD DVD consistently being a hundred bucks or more cheaper than Blu Ray. Gadget gurus, reporters, technology analysts, and bloggers monitored the situation as corporate America began to take sides on which technology to embrace. Below I will break down why I think Sony Blu Ray is on the verge of claiming victory against Toshiba backed HD DVD.

Origins-

Long story short, this war was almost avoided but electronics makers, movie studios, and technology companies could not come to an agreement on what would replace DVD as the next generation of disc for movie. For more information Wikipedia has a great write up on the rift and dispute

Studios Take Sides: Many believe the most important factor for this format war will come from movie studio support as they control which format their movies will come out on. Currently Blu Ray boasts Sony Pictures, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, and Disney as studios who exclusively release in Blu Ray for HD titles.

New line Cinema and Warner Brothers release movies in both formats while Paramount, Universal, and Dreamworks exclusively release to HD DVD. In August Paramount and Dreamworks made the switch from supporting both formats to being HD DVD exclusive with rumors that they committed to be HD DVD exclusive for $150 million for a 18 month commitment. This announcement ruffled some feathers in Hollywood with Michael Bay stating he would not direct Transformers 2 because it would not be on Blu Ray (he later retracted the statement but is still bitching about it.) Below is a list of popular recent movies and what formats they have been released on.

HD DVD

Knocked Up, Bourne Ultimatam , Transformers

Blu Ray

Superbad, Simpsons Movie, Talladega Nights, Spiderman 3, Ratatoile, Pirates of the Carribean 3

Both

300 The Departed

Technology Companies, Rental, and Retail Pick Sides:

Not to be overlooked is the actual distribution of new players and discs of these next gen players. With both format’s consortuims lobbying hard to win over corporate America, Blu Ray has taken a stronger position in this regard.

On the technology side Apple, Dell, Samsung, HP and Pioneer are members of the Blu Ray consortuim with, Intel, NEC, Microsoft, and Fujutsi all in HD DVD’s camp. Bottom line these electronic makers are on board with only making hardware that play, record, or burn these type of disks. With HP, Apple, Sony, and Dell in Blu Ray’s camp its safe to say Blu Ray holds an advantage in this category.

Although sales for players is still largely dominated by PS3 blu ray players over stand alone players, we are beginning to see traction of Blu Ray camcorders and disk drives in PC’s, laptops, and desktops.

The rental market has also chimed in heavily for Blu Ray with Netflix and Blockbuster opting to push Blu Ray nationally (testing showed blu ray were 70% rentals of HD rentals) prompting both to push roll out Blu Ray rentals only nationally. Target and other retailers have opted to carry movies on both formats but elected to only stock Blu Ray players over HD DVD as well.

The bottom line is that domestically and internationally Blu Ray movies have been sold at a much higher rate than HD DVD. Although this was to be expected with PS3’s making inroads in gamer’s houses all over the world, the unwillingness of corporate America to support HD DVD has led to some countries to boast 5-1 or even 9-1 advantage of Blu Ray disc sales compared to HD DVD. On the home front its not that bad but movies released in both formats tend to usually be 2-1 to 3-1 in favor of Blu Ray (Departed and 300 being the best 2 benchmarks)..

Below a quote from a great Business Week article about the number of players in the US for both sides

“According to industry tracker Adams Media Research, by the end of this year as many as 578,000 U.S. households will own HD DVD players, compared with 370,000 that have Blu-ray players. Adams also estimates there are 300,000 more HD DVD players in circulation as an external add-on to Microsoft Xbox game consoles. But that still pales in comparison to the estimated 2.3 million Blu-ray-equipped Sony PlayStation 3 consoles sold through November in the U.S.”

From these estimates you would have around 900,00 HD DVD players compared to 2,700,000 Blu Ray players with many of these being PS3’s that may or may not be utilized as a Blu Ray player.

So why is this Christmas season so special?

Although there are a not of players out in the market compared to DVD players,those who got that big fat HD TV in the last year or so might feel the need to splurge on one of these 2 kinds of players. HD DVD backers have thought the lower price would allow them to gain ground on Blu Ray. I would guesstimate the average playing being sold this Chrisman season for HD DVD would be around $225 with the average Blu Ray player being purchased at $400 (price of PS3, recently lowered which is sure to help the cause). Despite this price advantage,

Before talking about my commercial of the week, I wanted to bring up that I recently noticed that advertisers are now segmenting their commercials based on if consumers have HD. Let me explain. We all get ESPN and those of us who have HD receivers and tv’s get ESPNHD which is the same content but on a seperate channel.

Currently I would say about 60% of new commercials are in HD, up considerably from 6 months ago (maybe 40%? back then). However it was during tonight’s Monday night game when I had a second television on the non HD ESPN channel running simaltaneously that I noticed that ESPN HD was playing a completely different commercial. Although most of the commercials lined up several times, the HD channel would have a different advertisement about every other commercial break.

Nothing ground breaking here as I am sure plenty of people know this, but just an interesting fact that may have flew under the radar. Adverterisers are wise to segment the HD early adopters who are likely to have higher incomes, more education, knowledge of high end electronics and technology, and a willingness to spend on luxury items.

With that being said the commercial of the week goes to this new Iphone advertisement targeted spefically at the Blackberry business professional community. Although the release of the Iphone was met with a lot skepticism from the Blackberry owners, slowly and surely Blackberry owners are making the conversion. Its something I am seeing first hand as business professionals are coming to grips that the Iphone has the main functionality needed for work purposes and prefer the Iphone user interface. The below commercial is a great example showing off the stocks and email widgets in addition to looking up articles in Business Week and WSJ. Apple is really getting aggressive in their advertising and are doing a great conceptualizing their great products to the general public.

You don’t have to be a tech guru to know that the Apple Iphone has been one of most commercially successful products of 2007 while the Sony PS3 has struglled to perpetuate Sony’s strangle hold on the video game console market. As owners of both products I wanted to bring some perspective for why the discrepancy between two products that I both adore.

First off I wanted to say that I don’t think pricing is the key reason why the PS3 has stumbled, as 1.5 million people have purchased Iphones despite cheaper alternatives. To me its 100% marketing execution. Check out this video below which mocks Sony’s marketing efforts in a song called “How to kill a Brand”

The Iphone and PS3 are actually very similar. Both initially launched at $500 and play videos, music, photos, with ability to browse the internet. Both offer extensive functionality besides its key use as either a gaming console or cell phone, justifying their high price tag for the devices. However Apple took it upon itself to really show off the Iphone’s robust functionality and user friendly interface. Sadly Sony didn’t, thus it was up toconsumers to hit stores and the internet to learn more about the expensive gaming console. Interest never matriculated in the PS3, but it sure did in the Wii as typical non gamers were now taking a hard look at this fun new product.

Below are 2 examples of how Apple has taken it upon themselves to educate consumers on their product and 2 examples of Sony missing the mark with their initial ad campaigns.

Apple has since refreshed/reinforced these ads with a new round of advertisements with Iphone owners describing various success stories with their Iphones in front of a black screen.

Here are Sony’s first ads for the PS3. Notice that not only do you not learn jack about the product, but also how its creepy and more likely to make you change the channel.

Essentially Sony was unsuccessful in creating any consumer buzz. Although PS3 shortages were documented all over the country, it became apparent that the PS3 hype lacked longevity mainly due to a marketing campaign that failed to differentiate their product as was as educate the main stream market of the value and benefits of the PS3. Its really a shame too as countless friends of man have marveled at how cool of a product it is.

Update 9/26 In just one day of being posted I have already received several pointers on how to better utilize my Mac.