Hope For TiVo; Garmin?�s Flawed Strategy | Sramana Mitra on Strategy

Hope For TiVo; Garmin?�s Flawed Strategy Sramana Mitra on Strategy

TiVo, on the other hand, saw its shares soar after it won another major legal victory against Dish Network last week. Apart from $300 million in damages, TiVo also stands to gain a strong negotiating position in its lawsuits with AT&T and Verizon. Till date, TiVo has won $400 million in sanctions, and licensing is turning out to be a lucrative opportunity to cash in on.
TiVo has licensing deals with Comcast, Cox, and DirecTV and has entered into partnerships with Blockbuster, Netflix, Amazon.com, Best Buy, Virgin Media, RCN, and Walt Disney. It recently signed an audience research deal with Google that will integrate viewing data from TiVo into its measurement of audiences for ads sold through the Google TV Ads platform.

It looks as though Garmin is wasting money and will get into more trouble later it continues to pour money down the drain with its smartphone strategy. TiVo, however, could have an exciting second life as an IP licensing company à la Tessera, Interdigital, Qualcomm, and Dolby, all companies that we cover

TiVo Needs to Change Their Strategy to Survive - Business Schooled

最近STM探討的 case TiVo, 找到一些建議TiVo修訂策略的文章.

TiVo Needs to Change Their Strategy to Survive - Business Schooled

Recommendations

TiVo should rethink its business model to better position itself against these threats and to compete effectively within the maturing DVR industry. The following three recommendations work together to accomplish this goal. The process starts by re-branding the company, moving from a hardware-based to a predominantly software-based company, and leveraging its data gathering capabilities and services.

The first recommendation is a re-branding of TiVo. The company should switch from a focus of promoting its set-top box to promoting the “TiVo Experience”. TiVo has many differentiated features, such as its easy to UI, integration with on-demand video, smart search and recording capabilities and “TiVo-to-Go” which allows users to transfer TiVo recorded programs to their personal computer.
Effectively rebranding their service allows TiVo to take advantage of network effects that will create demand on both the user side and the content provider side. TiVo will position itself as the central platform that provides the User Interface consumers want and the access to consumers that the content providers and their advertisers desire. A similar effect was seen with the Intel chip. A consumer does not buy Intel directly, but one would not buy a computer without “Intel Inside”. Our goal is to make TiVo desired in the same way, where one does not want a DVR device that does not use TiVo software.

[CY] Accoring to Wiki, Network effects 要能發揮效用必須使用者或佔有率達到一critical mass. 以TiVo僅約300萬用戶來看, 是否已經達到critical mass, 需要進一步研究.

The second recommendation is that TiVo should slowly phase-out hardware sales. With TiVo’s current business model, hardware makes up only 17% of its revenues, but over 30% of its expenses. [ii] This leads to large losses on the hardware side and negative margins. The margins for the hardware segment for fiscal year 2007 through 2009 were -171%, -120%, and -40%. When compared to the software margins for these three years of 78%, 80% and 76%, it becomes evident that hardware is causing downward pressure on the company’s earnings.[iii] The sustainability of this recommendation assumes that TiVo is able to create demand among content providers as to avoid any hold-up effect.
Eliminating hardware sales allows TiVo to strive to become the standard platform for DVR software in the industry. Through a focus on Software as a Service, increased partnerships will allow TiVo to benefit from the low DVR penetration rate among content provider consumers. The percentage of Comcast subscribers with a DVR is around 20% and Time Warner is 25%[iv], showing that there is still a potential for deeper penetration within the existing market. If TiVo were to expand its partnership with Comcast and add Time Warner Cable, the net present value of these potential partnerships is $101.3 million (through 2014). See Exhibit 3 for details on the calculation of the NPV (not included). This business model generates a modest ARPU (average revenue per user) per month of approximately $1, however, it virtually eliminates TiVo’s hardware losses and subscriber acquisition costs.[1]

The third recommendation is to increase TiVo’s ability to leverage the viewer data that its software gathers from its subscribers. TiVo is capable of capturing the viewing habits of its consumers, both its own subscribers and from its partnerships with content providers. TiVo’s “StopWatch” ratings service has the ability to track what people watch, but more importantly, how people watch television.[v] The data obtained includes which hours viewers watch live or on time shift, which programs are the most recorded for later viewing, and which commercials are viewed or skipped when viewers watch the program on time shift.
TiVo’s data mining abilities creates additional benefits of the TiVo software and contributes to further network effects. TiVo can capture information from all users, providing more accurate and expansive marketing base for advertisers and other companies to access. Advertisers can use this information to make their ad placement more successful and profitable. This ability to increase the ROI for advertisers through TiVo’s technology will create demand from content providers’ advertising partners for TiVo’s services.

These three recommendations will shift TiVo’s competitive focus in the industry. It will move from a hardware provider to mainly Software as a Service company. TiVo will no longer be competing with Cable, DBS or Telecoms, but rather working with them as a partner and service provider.

foursquare

foursquare

又一個新奇好玩的social networking platform. 結合了熱門的LBS.
介紹請參考 http://mrjamie.cc/2009/09/12/foursquare/

所以 Foursqaure 是幹嘛的? 在介紹他的功能前，我們先來聊聊他試圖解決的問題。有使用噗浪的朋友都知道，我們常常噗現在在哪裡，或是今天去了哪裡，無論是餐廳也好，電影院也好，看球賽也好。但是這個應該很簡單的動做，常常很難發。要餐廳的名字到底是什麼? 如果是麥當勞的話還要搞清楚是哪一個分店。而收到噗的朋友，事情也沒有那麼簡單，如果想要多了解一下這家餐廳，還要自己去 Google。而 Foursquare 的目標，就是幫你解決分享”去了哪裡”的這些相關問題。
例如: 我今天一早起床到星巴克買咖啡，一邊排隊，一邊就打開 Foursquare 的手機應用程式，他馬上列出附近的商店，然後我只要做一個非常簡單的動作 — check in，我的朋友就知道我現在到了這家星巴克。中午跟朋友去麥迪遜公園的 Shake Shack 吃漢堡，check in。下午去蛋糕店買點心，check in。晚餐跟家人去 Basso56 吃義大利麵，check in。所以 Foursquare 的第一個功能，就是把”分享”有趣的地方這個動作，簡化到不能再簡化 — 打開手機，點三下，就完成了。降低了進入門檻，使用者容易上手，自然分享的人就越來越多。
用 Foursquare 發 update 簡單，相對的，收到朋友的 update，卻含有豐富的訊息，點一下某家餐廳，馬上出現一個專頁，裡面有地址，電話，地圖，網站，還有其他使用者的 review 等等:
這麼一來我收到你的 update，也不用去 Google 查 Shake Shack 到底在哪裡，吃什麼菜，有什麼好玩的。所以得到的資料豐富了，接收方跟著去拜訪這個地點的機率增加許多。
在這個簡單的框架上， Foursquare 又內建了許多”刺激使用”的功能，例如: 每次 check in 或是”發現新大陸”，就會拿到點數，可以跟朋友比比誰高分。每個店面，也都會有一個”市長”的頭銜讓大家搶，去過越多次的人就可以當老大。常常使用的會員，他們則會給你 super user 的封號，然後開放維護店面資料的功能讓你使用。當然他們也沒有忘記與其他社交網路整合，可以自動把你的 check in 轉發到 Twitter 與 Facebook 上。
這個 idea 很簡單，就是簡化分享地點的這個動作。就靠這個，他們最近募得了美金 135 萬。沒有很多，因為他們也不需要很多錢。但是更重要的是，他們的第一輪增資前評價居然高達美金 6 百萬。這對於一個沒有營收的小網路公司來說，簡直是天價。為什麼這麼高? 因為不像 Twitter，這個微網誌有很明顯得商業模式。等到他們累積了關鍵數量，可以非常輕易的跟餐廳收錢，好讓他們在自己的專頁打廣告，或是散發折價卷等等。
所以這是不是一個好的創業，絕對是。中文有沒有，還沒有。可不可以在台灣做，絕對可以。如果有興趣的朋友，歡迎跟我討論。

2010 Search Predictions: The Experts Weigh In - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

最近在讀 "Microsoft Search" Case, 也找了一些search engine 未來發展相關議題, 還蠻有趣的. 尤其是Google 最近被微軟策動一些子弟兵公司在歐洲控告Google 違反Antitrust, 如同1998年微軟在美國歐洲遭遇一樣. 只是Google 有像微軟過去那麼霸道? 況且Google並沒有一個像 Windows OS可以綁住所有人的武器. Google 如不再好好發展social networking, 將來使用者喜歡遷移到那裡去, Google可沒有太大的控制力. Gmail 控制力不夠, Buzz到底能否趕上FB, 變成Google 綁住使用者的武器?

2010 Search Predictions: The Experts Weigh In - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

1. John Battelle - Google will make a corporate decision to become seen as a software brand rather than as "just a search engine."

2. Ron Shuttleworth at Seeking Alpha, Vertical search will finally take off in 2010: local search enabled by GPS on mobile devices will capture the imagination of consumers during 2010.

3. Kim-Mai Cutler at Venture Beat - Twitter will launch its own social version of AdWords -- And contrary to what chief operating officer Dick Costolo said earlier this year, we're not sure everyone is going to love it. 3. Kim-Mai Cutler at Venture Beat - Twitter will launch its own social version of AdWords -- And contrary to what chief operating officer Dick Costolo said earlier this year, we're not sure everyone is going to love it.

3. Kim-Mai Cutler at Venture Beat - Twitter will launch its own social version of AdWords -- And contrary to what chief operating officer Dick Costolo said earlier this year, we're not sure everyone is going to love it.

4. Chris O'Brien at Mercury News - Google gets hit with an antitrust suit.

5. Alex Chitu at Google Operating System blog, Google's search engine will group related results.

Broadcom Buys Dune Networks; Broadens Data Center, Cloud Portfolio | The VAR Guy

Broadcom Buys Dune Networks; Broadens Data Center, Cloud Portfolio The VAR Guy

Semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom has acquired Dune Networks in its effort to make some serious inroads in the data center and cloud computing space. Here’s a look at the deal, and the implications for VARs.
Broadcom is shelling out $178 million in cash for Dune, which develops switch fabric solutions for data center networking equipment, in a mostly cash deal. The companies expect the deal to close by March 31, 2010 – the end of Broadcom’s first quarter.
In acquiring Dune Networks, Broadcom gains a plethora of technology including a scalable chipset that supports bandwidth speeds of up to 100Gbps per port and can connect more than 10,000 ports in a single deployment, according to the companies.
The acquisition is a milestone of sorts as Broadcom looks to move beyond its portfolio of Ethernet products and into a larger pool of networking products to be a real player in the data center and cloud computing spaces. Data centers are a natural step forward for a company like Broadcom. And in theory, the acquisition positions the company perfectly as more data centers expand to meet the bandwidth requirements of cloud computing.
Although the majority of companies are sluggish to move to the cloud, research firm Gartner believes cloud computing will grow to revenues of $14 billion by 2013.