Archive for the ‘Channel’ Category
Mourning But Not Missing the Death of Circuit City
As a consumer, I will not miss Circuit City as it closes its remaining 567 stores in the United States. But all software industry professionals should mourn its passing. Here’s how its closure impacts software industry professionals. Read the rest of this entry »
The Business of the iPhone SDK Part I
A new release of the Mac OS and version of Apple xCode, the Apple owned tool for building applications for Mac OS X in C++ or Objective-C, always brings with it a measure of hype into the Mac OS developer community that can occasionally slop over into the Mac OS user base. But I have yet to date see a release of a developer tool, let alone an SDK, receive this much attention since the original public showing of Java – yes, the Apple iPhone SDK. And this isn’t even about the actual release, but the availability of the beta! The final release is scheduled for some time around June, 2008.
I don’t want to talk about the technical details of the release, but as John Milton put it, to justify the way of God to men on the release format and what the business implications are for the release and the iTunes Store venue. Read the rest of this entry »
Top Flops are Always Fun: InfoWorld’s Top 25 Flops and Palm
Top technology flop lists are always fun, and InforWorld’s Neil McCallister has produced a really good top 25 technology flop list. What I think is interesting about these lists is that it was never the technology that failed, but the insufferable arrogance of the companies that developed them that sank them.
Two of them come to mind with my own experience: Palm and Netscape. Ill share first my Palm story. Read the rest of this entry »
Leegin V. PSKS Means Little for High Tech Anti-Competitiveness Pricing
The Supreme Court finding of Leegin v PSKS over manufacturers setting prices will have little impact in the computer software and hardware markets because many anti-competitive practices have been in effect for years. Read the rest of this entry »
Content Business vs Software Business
When I started Proactive International, we exclusively focussed on creating and expanding international distribution channels. We took on e-on software as a client while Vue 2 was still around and Vue 3 was in preparation. This introduced me to the business of licensing 3D content into the prosumer market. This resulted in the creation of our Meshbox Design division .
Although software consumes content, the businesses are fundamentally different. Software is all about highly productive process – and content is the fruit of that process. The intellectual property issues are entirely different and at times, conflicting- the hottest point of conflict: digital rights management and the motion picture industry. Software enables you to display, modify and expand your enjoyment of the content offered by the motion picture industry.
At the same time, as IP holders, the motion picture industry wants to maximize every opportunity to get more money for more uses of the same IP with as little additional work as possible and they are getting more and more clever about it. Look at the endless re-releases of movies – plain initial releases, director’s release, extended release, ultimate release. In each case, a little more content is added to the bill of materials (aka “BOMs”) of the new release, and under new skus. In other words, they want to repurpose the content yet again to create new products that by being unique, you could not possibly get the idea that you already licensed them.
The moral of this story is that, if you are a software vendor and want to license a popular culture character or clever preexisting piece of music, the IP owner will likely present you with a detailed license agreement that puts limits on your use of the character or music you are not accustomed to in the software business. This isn’t insanity – its to be expected.
