• nowość (z rana):
Mozilla Foundation kills Mozilla
• już było – ale tytuł ładny (choć oczywisty)
Apple 1, Indie Journalists 0
„The right to keep and maintain proprietary information as such is a right which the California Legislature and courts have long affirmed and which is essential to the future of technology and innovation generally.”
• już było, (od dawna u nas; i się nie chwalimy…) ale coraz więcej ludzi to widzi…
„SYNERGY AND OTHER LIES” would be a good first reading assignment for Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s new chief executive, to be followed by „The Synergy Myth.” Then Sir Howard should recognize that the Sony he inherits is constitutionally incapable of making one (electronics) plus one (entertainment) equal three.
(i większy fragment, bo zara dostęp odłączą)
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Sir Howard now presides over a company that appears – superficially – to be the polar opposite of an ITT-like conglomeration of unrelated businesses. Sony is accustomed to thinking of itself as consisting of two well-matched halves: electronics and entertainment.
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On one side, Sony has 50 years of experience in producing portable music players, beginning with transistor radios in the 1950’s and extended by its Walkman franchise that has sold more than 340 million players. On the other, it owns one of the world’s largest music labels to supply content. Yet in the iPod era, Sony’s headstart counts for nothing. It’s as if the company were the Sony Graphophone and Wax Record Company.
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Last week, Sony announced a bunch of new Walkmans positioned against the ultralight iPod Shuffle. They reflect the same insular hardware culture that learned the wrong lessons from the earlier success of the Walkman. The game today, however, is not necessarily about spec sheets and weight in grams.
At Sony, having both digital players and music in the same corporate family has actually been detrimental to its hardware interests. The music label directed the hardware group to make copying impossible, to the extent that until recently, customers could not enjoy on their Walkmans the music from their own legally bought CD’s that they had encoded in MP3 format.
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Arguably, Walkman product managers are even more blind to market reality than those at Connect. Today, they are selling the 20-gigabyte Network Walkman for $50 more than the comparable iPod, even though it cannot use any music sold on Apple’s site or on those of the many competitors that use Microsoft’s widely licensed compression standard.
A company thrives when it has all that it needs to make a compelling product and is undistracted by fractiousness among divisions that resent being told to make decisions based upon family obligations, not market considerations. Mr. Jobs appreciates the advantages of keeping content separate from distribution. At Pixar, he’s in the digital movie business, which uses many skill sets that are used over at Apple, too. Yet he has elected to let the two live happy separate existences, without falling for the synergy myth.
The reach of a company with the optimal mix of assets can extend in all directions – and right through the front door of its competitors. Last month, Wired magazine reported that 80 percent of Microsoft employees who owned a digital player owned an iPod. Coming as he does from the entertainment side of Sony, a healthy distance from the home of the Walkman, Sir Howard appreciates, no doubt, more than other Sony executives how far behind his company is.
