Apple Offers No Surprises

It gets harder and harder to keep a secret.  The more people that know it, the greater the chance it gets shared.  People love to gossip and it seems inside Apple, people love to share all the things that they are up to. So yesterday's announcement was news that had all been released in the rumor mill.  No surprises.

When Steve Jobs was alive, it seemed that Apple was able to surprise us with new technology, new products, and new features.  There was the "one more thing" that offered a big reveal.  But that has been missing since his death.  No surprises, no big reveal, no new product, no amazing new feature.  Apple continues to excel and consumers are buying.  They are a solid company with a huge user base buying cloud services and apps from the App Store.

And we learned that they have 17 million subscribers to the Apple Music streaming service.  Not a bad source of revenue each month.  With expectations that the service will grow, it is by itself a solid business.  Pandora and Spotify think so.  And that is just one small part of the Apple universe.

Still no surprises from the media conference.  No "one more thing" announcement.  Given how hard it is to keep a secret, it is hard to expect that Apple will ever surprise us.  Leaked pictures, insider scoop, will doom that possibility.  Without Jobs, one wonders if we will ever be surprised by Apple again. 

Apple Eliminates The Headphone Jack

Confirmed, the new iPhone 7 will remove the headphone jack and require an adapter to connect the headphone to the iPhone via the lightening port.  So now you can't charge and use your headphone at the same time.  Ideally, it is time to upgrade to a bluetooth enabled headphone.  RIP Headphone Jack!

NY TIMES TECH TIP

Hoping you read today's NY Times.  If so, you probably received the best Tech Tip, or more accurately e-mail etiquette.  Enjoy!

Why Wireless Headphones For Apple

Check out this Business Insider story on the possible iPhone 7 and "wireless earpods".  While good reasons to go wireless includes no tangling of wires, BI says that there may also be a marketing angle.  They point to the intro of the iPod with the "white wire" in Apple ads and other ad examples including the lime atop the Corona Light.  Advertising pushed the appeal and made it a must have item.  The same could be true for the iPhone 7.  Sold and marketed with an initial wireless earpod, the new iPhone 7 could become the next must have device.  It does sound appealing.

Can good marketing be the difference?  With the prospect of a new iPhone without a headphone jack, Apple needs to let us see just how different its new earbud will be.  That will include such physical attributes as freedom of movement, no tangling, and better sound quality.  Of course that must be balanced with how frequently we need to recharge the ear bud to make them work.  Just how many chargers do we have to own?  Hopefully the marketing helps consumers fully realize the full value of the next iPhone release. 

Apple Event September 7

Next Thursday, just 8 days from today, Apple will once again try to dazzle us with its next set of upgrades.  Just in time to have on the shelves for the Holiday Season, many expect the next iteration of the iPhone, as well as upgrades to its Apple Watch and mac computers.  Upgrades yes, a new product launch no.

Given the rumor mill that always precedes these events, none have included or hinted at a new product release.  No Amazon Echo clone, no Apple car, no Apple TV set.  No buzz means that we can expect to simply here how each product has been tweaked to encourage us to upgrade our own devices.  And don't expect that Apple announces plans to acquire any content companies.  As much as we would love to hear them make a play for Scripps or CBS or Netflix, that is also an unlikely scenario for the event on Thursday. 

Be careful though if you do decide to upgrade your iPhone when it comes out.  You may find that it no longer syncs with your older mac and iTunes program.  That means you can't back up on a computer and must do it online.  And cloud backups will cost you.  The more memory you use on the iPhone or iPad, the more storage it may cost you.  Given the need for more icloud storage, expect too that Apple will announce new service plans to support you and your family's devices.

It has been rumored that the iPhone 7 may no longer have a separate headphone jack.  All connections are made through the lightening adaptor or via bluetooth.  As to those folks that have a Beats Headset, now owned by Apple, you will have to decide whether to buy a new bluetooth headset or stick with your old iPhone.  For Apple, Beats was all about the music subscription service and not the products.

So get revved up for next Thursday.  Always fun to watch the announcement and see how the stock market immediately reacts to it.  Enjoy!

Does Moonves Have Say In Merging With Viacom

When Sumner Redstone decided to split his empire into two media companies, CBS and Viacom, the initial thought was likely that broadcast was holding back the cable side of the business.  But fast forward ten years and Les Moonves was able to take his portion, CBS Inc., and watch it grow and prosper while the cable arm called Viacom has not.  Can synergy now save Viacom?

Well, now that Shari Redstone, daughter of Sumner, has gotten control, many believe that her next is to merge the companies together.  Viacom certainly needs the help and perhaps an overhaul of talent making the current strategic decisions.  Paramount has lost its mojo, and the cable nets are no longer relevant.  Need proof, just watch the recent MTV VMA music awards.  Not many tuned in from last year and the numbers had a major decline.  It was a performance show, not an awards show, and the performances overall were meh.  Yes to spectacle, no to real singing.  Most seemed to be karaoke and less live. 

And while merging CBS and Viacom makes sense, it also requires the buy-in of CBS CEO Leslie Moonves.  If he is not onboard, then the odds against a positive synergistic combination seems low.  I suspect if Moonves had his say, he would buy just Paramount and sell off the cable nets.  Unfortunately, he may not have a choice and Redstone may force him to it.  As to his power to push back or leave if his back is against the wall.  That may also be an option. 

CBS's Newest Revenue Stream

The rise of streaming, the challenge to increase ad revenue as well as licensing of its network to cable companies all play into the strategic mix as CBS seeks revenue growth.  Certainly content matters and quality shows that generate buzz hope to find audiences that stay loyal to their plots.  And building new distribution outlets to grow as a business remain relevant.

In the case of CBS, they chose not to be a partner in the Hulu streaming business.  The other three broadcasters NBC, ABC, and Fox, and now Time Warner have ownership shares in the Hulu business.  Instead, CBS is trying something new, its own streaming subscription service called CBS All Access.  For a $5.99 monthly fee, subscribers get "more than 7,500 on-demand episodes from the current season and previous seasons of classic shows, as well as the ability to stream local CBS stations live in more than 150 markets across the U.S." according to Multichannel News.  And following the learning curve of other streaming services like Amazon and Netflix, CBS All Access will offer original productions too, "including Star Trek: Discovery, a spin-off of The Good Wife and a new digital edition of Big Brother."

The question this strategy hopes to answer, is it better to build a new service or partner with an existing one.  Is there enough content of interest to subscribers to entice them to join?  Can marketing sell the value of adding another streaming service charge to the entertainment household budget?  CBS is trying to make it easy to access its streaming service with Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, XBox, Amazon Fire TV and more.  Accessibility does not seem to be a problem.

But I wonder if going it alone and not with Hulu, CBS studied whether a brand name associated with the broadcast network or one without a connection made more sense.  Will customers more likely embrace the subscription service because of the CBS name or feel that they should be getting this content already if they are current cable subscribers with on demand.  Would it have better suited the service to create a more unique name like Carousel or Tainment or StreamCity to compete in the streaming media landscape?  Was CBS All Access a better name choice to drive subscription revenue?  We will watch and see. 

What Will Viacom Do With Paramount

If you haven't guessed after reading my blogs, I am a huge fan of content.  But content does not live in a vacuum and the yin and yang between content and distribution, adding a dash of marketing to the mix, makes the difference between success and failure.  Good content can help distribution and good distribution can help bad content; ideally, great content, easily discoverable and accessed matters.

So today we have Viacom, a media company with an ailing CEO, infighting of the relatives, a changing board, and other leadership issues struggling to fix all the wholes, from falling ratings at their cable networks to poor movie making choices at Paramount.  Its latest box office dud being Ben Hur with very little box office hits to mention.  What should Viacom do with Paramount, where once The Godfather, Indiana Jones, and Titanic all were released?

There has been some speculation that Viacom should sell some if not all its ownership in Paramount.  But I love content and believe it is the driver to growth for Viacom.  I believe selling makes little sense unless the plan is to give up and sell all of Viacom.  Paramount, with the right talent on board, can make great content again.  And great movies are currency to be sold over and over again across different distribution windows. 

But what is in the pipeline of future Paramount releases following the awful Ben Hur film starts to question the internal leadership and the choices they are making.  October is the release of the next Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, a possible hit, but they are also banking on a number of other sequels including Transformer, Friday the 13th, and Terminator.  What happened to originality?  Even their latest release of Star Trek Beyond felt like an overly long TV plot rehash.  If there is change to make at Paramount's film unit, it starts at the top.

As to their TV department, Paramount also produced Grease: Live,  Criminal Mind, NCIS, and others.  And hopefully they will have more upcoming hits to mention.  With so much demand for TV content in the streaming world from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, Paramount should have no problem finding homes for their product, as long as the quality is there.  Like my concern with movies, rehashing old series and classic movies at the expense of originality does not seem like the best route to take. 

So what should Viacom do with Paramount?  I say keep it.  If your plan is to sell Viacom, it is more valuable as part of a bigger deal.  if the plan is to reinvigorate Viacom, Paramount is a perfect complement to their media empire. 

The Profit In Data - Storing And Streaming

I'm struck by an epiphany as I watch how much data I continue to acquire.  I don't mean bookshelves or albums or DVDs; they get less filled as my books, my music, my photos, my videos, my life are all now bits and bytes of data.  And I see too that the cost to store and stream continues to grow as I accumulate more stuff. 

Already, I have on my computer over 15,000 photos, the more recent ones requiring more memory than the ones taken in 2000.  My iTunes account includes more and more downloaded books, music, and videos and my computer's memory is nearly at capacity.  My Carbonite account helps safeguard these digital assets, at a cost, as I sense that I will need a new computer with more memory in the not too distant future.  And Apple is gracious enough (lol) to sell me more cloud backup space for my iPhone and iPad.  The costs to store will only continue to rise.

And then there are the costs to stream data.  Subscription fees from folks like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, help drive up the monthly costs.  One's love of music means monthly subscription plans from Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music.  We no longer need to own when we can rent and stream as much as we want.  But the costs to access also extend to the companies that sell us data plans to receive these streaming signals.  The more we stream, the more we consume, the more data services we buy.  Of course, the speed to receive these streams can also come with a higher cost; the faster the stream, the more we pay. 

As we move further and further from physical media to digital media, the cost to access data, stream it, and receive it will only increase.  And the profits will only grow.  Data is our new gold and we are mining it at an ever increasing pace.  It is the business to be in.