One player to rule them all

With all the fuss and so called leaks about new Apple iPod player coming next Tuesday, I’ve decided to post something I wrote to Microsoft’s Robert Scoble few weeks ago. Hate to say, but it seems I had a point regarding the PDAs – just look what are all those iPod leaks about.

“For quite some time, magazines and e-zines have been reporting about Microsoft’s interest in releasing a product that would compete with Apple’s iPod. I believe it is safe to say that there have been such reports ever since Apple released first generation of iPod player and after tremendous sales analysts used their logic and proposed that Microsoft (among other companies) would jump into market and take away the crown of evil company called Apple in this case. Well, many tried, no one had much success, not even Creative. But hey, people have right to express their opinion.

Anyway, rumors are back again. Apple released Apple Video player (after saying they wouldn’t do so) and Apple released brand new line of computers based on Intel’s chips (after saying they would never…) so it looks Apple is on the move again. Q4 sales was really, really good, stocks are up and everything is going really well, so someone has to write a new conspiracy theory because you can’t just let them do their thing too good, right? So, to make conclusion, Apple is evil there, they have monopoly and they are using Intel’s chips, but before they get crusaded, let’s add someone else in the mix.

How about Sony? Yeah, that’s sounds too good even for Spanish TV novel, but it’s IT. After being company no 1. with CD players for years, Sony never managed to produce decent mp3 player. However, they did other things right. Yeah, I’m talking about PlayStation here. 100 millions of PS2 consoles speak pretty much for itself, but they didn’t stop there and they’ve released a handheld console, PlayStation Portable (PSP), and attacked Nintendo’s long time basement. Press was excited. Excitement didn’t last long (if we don’t count famous firmware updates).

Finally, we reach for winning card. Microsoft! (press gets crazy) In the mix we already have long time “enemies” of the Microsoft, known as Apple and Sony. OK, people will say that Microsoft already answered to Sony by producing Xbox and to Apple by making Windows Vista (which “brings it all”) but that’s far from enough, since both of “other” companies have other stuff where they do well and press just thinks that Microsoft can’t watch it. Well, it is true that every big company wants to be on market where it can earn more money (nothing wrong about that), but is Microsoft going to attack iPod and PSP’s market?

Some time ago, I remember Mr. Gates saying that Microsoft had no plans or whatsoever of producing the handheld console. If I’m not mistaken, he could’ve said it in interview he gave for you Robert. When press finally gave up on evil conspiracy theory, BusinessWeek published article and quoted Moore saying “It can’t just be our version of the iPod”! Argh, here we go again. I just think Microsoft shouldn’t do it because from this point it looks almost impossible to make unique device and I’ll tell you why I think so.

Handheld market exists and it is almost too crowded with Nintendo and Sony being leaders there. People are already offered devices that can play video and mp3s along with modern games, but it comes in a big size (PSP or DS), so you have Micro and other GameBoy versions for people who want true “pocket gaming” but without great graphics and other features. So, I believe our new device has to be small. How small? Small like a cell phone. Hey, it should be a cell phone! If you want to make some distance between competition, you have to add something. So let’s you have cell phone and great features there (e.g. screen quality, 3D graphics and sound effects), but doesn’t this sound familiar?

Yes, it does. Nokia, world’s largest manufacturer of cell phones, already tried exact approach with Ngage and it didn’t work. Sony-Ericsson made something similar with their Walkman series of cell phones and it is going pretty well, except it doesn’t have games (someone said Java?). You could add a service for buying music, videos and games, but guess what, Apple already offered something similar in cooperation with Motorola. So tell me, where is the space for innovation right there?

I just don’t see it there, meaning, Microsoft could go just one way and produce a device that is ultimately Xbox Portable (hm, gotta admit it sounds cool to refer it as XP). Why? Because when you offer great graphics, people just want bigger screen. If you add GSM features, no one is going to use it since the device itself would be too big. You’ll get chance to play Xbox games, share music and other stuff trough wireless, play music and videos and definitely have better cooperation with Windows operating system, but does it really differ from iPod and PSP? It doesn’t and it can’t. That’s why I believe it would be too much of risk even to Microsoft to gamble on a new market that would bring it all-in-one since end-users are simply too picky.

If Microsoft decides to go “other way”, it will end up producing the product that’ll be better then others in terms of performance and probably features, but it won’t be unique. Any solution? Well, I see only one product in mind – PDA: loaded with some Windows “Multimedia” OS and with possibility to play “Xbox games”, watch videos and listen to music with ease. Is this something that we want? I’d certainly like to have some Xbox-like games on my PDA (HP hx4700) but do we really need whole new platform for that? I’d just release new Windows OS for PDAs and bring Xbox games to the table since hardware inside newest PDAs isn’t being used by current applications anyway. And yes, PDAs already have the most you’d ask for: their size is acceptable, there are models with GSM integration, they have hardware, they have applications, integrated WiFi, BlueTooth, cards for storage etc.”