Monday, March 6, 2006
TiVo Hopes to Sell Software to Other DVR Makers
Posted by Jeremy Charette in "NEWS" @ 01:00 PM
"TiVo Inc. (TIVO) Chief Executive Tom Rogers hopes his biggest rivals in the television set-top box market — U.S. cable television providers — may soon be eager customers, but analysts are not so sure. Rogers told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York this week that he hopes cable operators will be "hugely successful" in distributing generic digital video recorders, or DVRs. In many cases, these cable DVRs — able to pause live TV and skip commercials — are distributed free, replacing TiVo DVRs that typically cost at least $200 per household. That's fine, Rogers said, since TiVo eyes a future where it gains fee-paying subscribers without selling a set-top box. "We want the cable industry to have as many of those DVR boxes out there as possible," said the chief executive of the TV recording technology company. "We're a total software upgrade when you think of the cable side of our business. The more that are out there, the more we have an opportunity to roll out to, the more we have the ability for cable subscribers to become TiVo subscribers.""
Like most smart companies, Tivo sees that the money lies in licensing and subscription fees, not in the notoriously cut-throat low-margin battlefield of consumer electronics. After reading this article, it is even clearer to me why Tivo has dominated in the DVR marketplace while its' competitors have languished. Witness this quote from Cisco's Chief Development Officer, Charles Giancarlo: "With user interfaces, the technology is not very complicated. I don't tend to believe that user interfaces are all that hard to create..." Doesn't he get it? Sure, they're not hard to create, but making a user interface that's intuitive, interactive, and that users actually enjoy is where the real challenge lies. Witness the success of Apple's iPod, Tivo, or the Xbox 360. They may not have the best technical specifications, but they deliver the best user experience, and that's what people are willing to pay for.
Like most smart companies, Tivo sees that the money lies in licensing and subscription fees, not in the notoriously cut-throat low-margin battlefield of consumer electronics. After reading this article, it is even clearer to me why Tivo has dominated in the DVR marketplace while its' competitors have languished. Witness this quote from Cisco's Chief Development Officer, Charles Giancarlo: "With user interfaces, the technology is not very complicated. I don't tend to believe that user interfaces are all that hard to create..." Doesn't he get it? Sure, they're not hard to create, but making a user interface that's intuitive, interactive, and that users actually enjoy is where the real challenge lies. Witness the success of Apple's iPod, Tivo, or the Xbox 360. They may not have the best technical specifications, but they deliver the best user experience, and that's what people are willing to pay for.
