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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Jobs to Media: You’re All On NoticeThursday, October 6, 2011 Like most inventor/geniuses, Steve Jobs could best be understood as an accelerator of inevitable trends. He didn’t invent .jpg) digital music players; he perfected them and made us want them. He didn’t invent the smartphone or even the app; he made both of them viable and attractive to millions more than had anyone before him. His relationship with the media industries was considerably more tortured and contentious than his magical relationship with consumers, however. From the digitization of music to 99-cent tracks that broke the album model; from downloadable TV episodes to digital rentals; from proprietary app gardens to a persistent insistence on ultra-low content pricing – Jobs did not make media companies comfortable. Nor did he invent any of those pressures that the digital revolution brought to bear on analog forms and their business models. What Jobs did do is move media companies towards the inevitable. He forced the issue of changing media business models to accommodate consumer desire. The fact is that most of us did want cheaper, à la carte access to our media. It was the media companies’ job to create business models that made that fundamental shift work. And at the same time Jobs and Apple were not impervious to competitive forces. The arrival finally of subscription pricing to the iTunes App store and a Newsstand home for digital periodicals in the upcoming iOS 5 update demonstrates that even Apple had to play catch-up now and then. But his stubborn insistence that digitization ultimately would open up new markets, opportunities and business models for content partners is a vision still waiting to be realized. Just as WalMart in the 1980s and 1990s forced suppliers to change their manufacturing processes and models to match the WalMart way, so too did Apple and Jobs have that effect on media in the 2000s. The Apple way was to use incredibly complex technology to make the user experience simple and usable. In the background, however, the supply chain, the technological innovation, the reinvention of business models, was daunting in its complexity. Jobs put the media industries on notice that they would have to follow the Apple Way: make your engineers and executives jump through hoops, deal with complexity…so your consumers don’t have to. Make it easier and more fun for people to use your product than it is for them to use your competitor’s. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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