Is The Best Way To Ensure Success To Lock In Your Customers?
from the never-knew-dear-abby-gave-advice-to-tech-companies dept
The downslide of Palm is a long-running tale, and the latest development is another round of rumors that the company is up for sale. Nokia has been mentioned as a possible buyer, even though such a deal wouldn't make a lot of sense, with Motorola and a private-equity buyout also mentioned. A story from BreakingViews in the WSJ laments the fall of Palm, saying it happened because the company "failed to build competitive barriers around its devices, so consumers weren't locked into its products." In short, it says the ability for Palm users to easily export their contact data from the devices made it too easy for them to switch to devices made by its rivals. Palm's made plenty of missteps along the way, but this really isn't one of them. Companies that can't compete any other way rely on barriers like this to force customers to stay. The article cites the example of the iPod, but badly misses on the lock-in part, not citing the role music bought from iTunes plays, but rather the bizarre idea that if users got a different brand of music player, they'd have to re-rip all their CDs. It falls further off the track when it cites the Motorola RAZR, saying it offered "insufficiently sticky features" to keep users from switching away. The RAZR didn't sell on features, it sold on design, and playing to fashion means playing to a clearly fickle market. In any case, it also ignores the realities of the handset market, where many users switch devices on a fairly regular basis. Locking in your customers isn't the way to keep them. Perhaps instead, companies should spend their energies on creating the best and most innovative products they can, making customers want to use their products, rather than simply feeling forced to.
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Lock in customers?
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Product Lock in
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Re: Product Lock in
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Thats not why I stopped using one
If anything I stopped using it for exactly the opposite reason - it got to be too much hassle keeping it in sync, with the conduits constantly failing to do their job properly
To produce little apps for it was problematic and awkward and I really couldn't be bothered learning a whole new architecture just to do that
If it had been more cross-compatible it would have probably lasted longer and I'd have probably bought a new model (I did actually quite like it when it was working)
At least some data could be transferred - if this hadn't been possible I would never have bought one in the first place
So at least for me LockIn=LockOut
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Lock-in Has Worked Well for MS
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Re: Lock-in Has Worked Well for MS
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gutter journalism
There is more diversity in the technology market than ever before and customers are quite wise to compatability issues. Interoperability is the clincher in any gadget sale these days. It's surprising that a publication with the reputation of the Wall Street Journal is so utterly out of step with modern thinking.
But, cynically speaking, the WSJ has become a pop rag. Its hidden agenda is to mislead casual investors into the margins while those in the know are pouring their money into the future of technology, open standards and open source.
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Re: gutter journalism
This notion relies on archaic business models anyway which need purging. So--you need to lock down your hardware, so your software division is assured a market? Why are your hardware and software divisions the same company anyway? This is basically 100% intimate collusion between two firms which ought to be separate. Actually--didnt palm split into a hardware and software companu? And now theyre not faring well? Maybe thats what the WSJ sees. Even still, to anyone in the trenches, its obviously a slimy practice which is doomed to extinction.
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Re: gutter journalism
Well, if that isn't the biggest load of horse dung to appear on this site in a long time, I don't know what is. Take off your tinfoil hat and get a clue, bozo.
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Re: Re: gutter journalism
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Re: Re: Re: gutter journalism
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That's what I was thinking.
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lockin schmockin
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Apple customers should cross their fingers and hope that Apple continues to be such a great company with a great product, otherwise all those sheeple are going to be really bummed when DRM and proprietary formatting locks them out of their own music collection...
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BS
Ripping them in the first place puts them into your iTunes library, and they are stored in folders in the iTunes Library folder.
If you want to transfer them to another program to use with another player, since they HAVE NO DRM, you can just move them to that other player's library, or import them using that other player's software. Most will do that. If it won't use AAC, then use iTunes to translate them into mp3's, then transfer them.
There is no need to re-rip them, unless the other player's software forces you to do that, in which case, it's not Apple forcing you, it's that other player.
Lame.
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Completely the opposite
Palm should have opened its os; it could have become the linux of handhelds if it had done so. Now it's set to join Amiga and DEC as iHasBeens.
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Palm & Dell
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