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OUTLOOK: The Video iPod: Free Publicity to Die For

Posted on: Friday, 14 October 2005, 06:00 CDT

By JEREMY WARNER

No amount of money could have bought the publicity Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, has achieved over the past few days for his latest gizmo, the video iPod. Not since the launch of Microsoft's Windows in the mid-1990s, which ironically nearly sunk Apple as it then was, have I seen a product generate so much free press. Even Harry Potter struggles to match the ubiquitous Mr Jobs, the ultimate showman and now a powerful rival to Bill Gates for the title of world's greatest living entrepreneur, in the anticipation he creates.

Yet despite the marketing hype, this great outpouring of free publicity was, I think, entirely justified. This is not because of Mr Jobs' achievement in creating a modern fashion icon. There are plenty of those around and most of them last little more than five minutes. Rather, it is because he is at the forefront of a genuine media and entertainment revolution which is changing both the way we live and the way the business landscape is organised.

The original iPod was not such a revolution. Though the iPod utilises the new technology of internet downloads, it is in effect little more than a souped-up Sony Walkman, the latter of which has been around for more than 30 years. The video iPod, by contrast, is a genuine first, offering the possibility of watching your favourite TV programme or movie while on the move. It is of course only an intermediate technology, in that it will soon be possible to do the same, real time as it were, over your mobile phone. Yet it is the first of its kind, a sort of Stevenson's rocket of the internet age.

The significance is hard to exaggerate. It won't entirely destroy traditional broadcast television, but by allowing the consumer to pay for his content when and where he wants it, it is bound over time to eat deep into these once core media markets. Companies such as ITV, which rely for their revenues on delivering a mass market to advertisers, will have to rethink their business models. Advertising- funded content will increasingly be replaced by paid-for content.

The video iPod is only a part of the revolution in media being brought about by broadband. Broadband is the pipe down which the video downloads are delivered. No industry is unaffected by this revolution in communications, but the media is in its vanguard. The brave new world dreamt of by the early dot.comers is finally becoming a reality, and it is forcing everyone to change.

Many even of the most savvy business leaders failed to appreciate by quite how much. A year ago, I asked James Murdoch, the chief executive of BSkyB, what threat broadband posed to his business. His answer was that broadband provided the opportunity of another distribution channel, but no more than that. Now, it emerges, he's fast changing his tune. Interestingly it was Mr Murdoch Snr, Rupert, who experienced the blinding flash on the road to Damascus, evidence, if evidence were needed, that futuristic thinking is not always confined to the young.

Sky is planning to become a direct provider of broadband services as part of a strategy aimed at creating a rounded, general entertainment business, capable of delivering not just pay TV, but interactivity, telephony, downloads and anything else the consumer might fancy. Media is fast moving from a 'provider decides' to a 'consumer makes the choice' model. Ever the visionary, Mr Jobs has positioned himself at the forefront of this revolution.

Source: Independent, The; London (UK)

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