The Hearst electronic reader: Brilliant stroke or gasping for air
Hearst is going to introduce its own electronic reader for its newspapers and magazines. There’s part of this idea that is brilliant—in fact Catalyst bloggette Karen Webster and I had even suggested it over a year ago—and there’s part that is simply boneheaded.
The brilliant part is that traditional print media needs a better way to serve ads and provide connectivity than is possible with the (although I personally still love ‘em) dirty print editions and more convenient for readers than sitting at the PC (who wants to go sit at their PC with the morning java when they are going to be spending the rest of the day doing that). The stunningly dumb part is the notion that people are going to be using a device that’s just for Hearst.
Come ‘on: Kindle or Sony or someone else has the prospect of getting the scale and network effects for their readers. But the notion that individual media entities could possibly persuade people to get a reader just for their stuff, rather than relying on a general purpose reader, is just too stupid for words. If the media industry isn’t happy with the Kindle they should collaborate and invest in something that works for all of them. This isn’t an area where anyone can go at it alone. Did I hear Roooosebuuud….
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Digital Media, Newspaper Publishing, New Business Models, consumers, Economics, Newspapers, Internet, two-sided market
Hi David - I agree with you that this is just too stupid for words. With an iPod and a mobile phone (unless you have an iPhone) most folks already have one too many devices and are looking to consolidate. Specialized devices such as the Kindle can survive for a while by being spectacular at one thing. Taking a specialized device down to the level of market segment granularity proposed by Hearst is guaranteed to fail. Bet on it.
Here’s a broader question related to the Kindle and mobile devices. Now that “perfectly adequate” e-book readers are available on mobile devices, what is Amazon’s next strategic move in mobility? Does the Kindle become a family of mobile devices with the core competency of e-book reading, commoditizing everything else by “throwing it in”? RIM executed this strategy, but some would say they haven’t really made it past the e-mail core competency yet.
Our prediction is that the major “smart device” vendors will be Apple, RIM, and Amazon. All of these players have a unique, highly horizontal core competency they bring to their devices (RIM - e-mail; Apple - media and 3rd party apps; Amazon - e-books). All three enjoy tremendous brand loyalty and distribution advantages over everyone else, and most importantly they all control the “whole product”, creating a highly integrated unit between the OS and the device. The bifurcated OS/device model worked for Microsoft in the PC industry but smartphones are just too complex, with too many variables to manage. Adding persistent voice and data connectivity to a “mobile computer” prohibits any other approach but the “whole product” (will be very interesting to watch Android - Windows Mobile is stuck in the mud).
Back to media companies. Net net, this is a very big, complex sandbox and arguably the big trains have already left the station. Hearst has no business trying to play in it.