Steve Jobs gets it right, and wrong
The great and all powerful Steve Jobs, Lord of all he surveys and CEO of Apple, was chatting at the All Things Digital conference earlier this week and apart from debating why he doesn’t like Flash and how Apple really cares about the slaves … workers at the Chinese factory that makes some of its products the most interesting comments were reserved for the iPad and the future of media.
Most importantly, in my opinion were his comments about the iPad and the future of media.
Now, in my informal role as the official Apple fanboy in these parts, I just need to state that I do not own an iPad (but would dearly love to have one) and I have bought numerous applications for my iPhone that I have never used and probably shouldn’t have wasted my money on.
I do think that the great and powerful Steve has a few interesting points, even if he is wrong.
Firstly he said something that I am in full agreement with, that the iPad is probably the herald of a new era of computing. That in the future we will be using tablet-sized computers a lot more and these will probably be the primary method we use for consuming all manner of media, be it video, words, music or (most probably) a mashup of all of these.
Apple may be the first to deliver a compelling offering in this space, but I am pretty sure that Apple will not own this market much longer. As awesome as the iPad is, and as fantastic as its successor (which will be thinner, faster and lighter) will probably be Apple is up against some simple truths.
First, the iPad (and pretty much all Apple products) are just too expensive for the ordinary man, and especially the ordinary South African. You need only look at the Generation Next Survey done by the Sunday Times, where Nokia comes out top in the cellphone category and Samsung in the computer category, to see that South African consumers do not view Apple with the same reverence that the company gets in the US and other developed nations.
My theory is that this all comes down to price, Apple products are simply out of the reach of most middle-class South Africans and as such will never have the popular appeal of the Samsungs and Nokias of the world that make a concerted effort to cater to those that don’t have copious amounts of spare cash lying around.
Luckily for us there is one company that does care about the little people and that is Google.
Because Google makes its money out of flogging advertising and for some reason it decided that creating a mobile operating system was a good idea and then took it a step further by letting the world’s handset manufacturers have it for pretty much nothing we have a cost-effective alternative. For this reason we are already seeing companies launching Android-based tablets and I would bet that it won’t be long before every HTC, Nokia and Samsung has an iPad competitor out there.
And this is just the start. With the development of more and more interesting display technologies and faster wireless networks the way we access content is going to change fundamentally.
It just won’t be on an Apple device that the majority of people see it.
The second issue that the high priest of Apple addressed was the payment for media.
His Steveness seems to think that there is a direct comparison between people buying movies and music and books through iTunes and people buying access to news and other media through the same mechanism.
I can see a large number of people paying good money for applications that give them dedicated access to their favourite sources of news in an optimised environment much like the Wired app that launched recently.
What I don’t think people will do is pay to subscribe to news media services. If you want to generate money out of news then sell advertising around it. Those companies that think it is a good idea to erect a paywall around your sites will find out quickly enough that consumers will simply migrate to a site that offers similar quality content free.
The one thing that Apple has done right is buy an ad service that companies can integrate into their apps, giving publishers an easy way to insert advertising into their apps.
Apple may think that people will give up money to buy access to information that will be useless in a day or so, but I don’t think this is the case. There is no value in old news so why would I want to buy it?
In this case those organisations that get onto the new devices (not just those from Apple) quickly make their content easily accessible they will be the winners. The luddites who think that the model that worked 20 years ago is still valid will be left looking at their empty newsroom and negative bank balances.
Steve Jobs and the future of news << comments and views
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