Month: May 2009

The blogs are buzzing with the news that for the first quarter the Blackberry Curve outsold the Apple iPhone according to NPD Research.

I read it first on Techmeme and clicked through to a number of posts on the subject. All of them citing the NPD research.

There is no doubt that the Blackberry is a mighty fine device but total units isn’t the important thing in my view. Few things to consider:

1 – The Blackberry Curve is available on every single carrier in the United States. Verizon (biggest US carrier) had a buy one-get one promotion. It would be an absolute shocker if the iPhone, available only on AT&T, exceeded the Curve

2 – The Blackberry App World is still lacking big time in my experience. Both in UX and apps. RIMM needs to get developer attention. That’s critical.

3 – iPhone 3.0 OS, which I’ve been using in beta, is going to hurt RIMM. Copy & paste, search and horizontal keyboard is a big improvement and will win over plenty of bberry users.

It’s no secret that cable operators pay billions of dollars to content owners.

NBC gets big bucks from Comcast, Time Warner et al for CNBC and their other cable properties. Even bigger fees goto the king of cable programming – ESPN. Those content owners get a dual revenue stream: subscription fees and ad dollars. That revenue stream from MSOs is what led to the famous line from NBC chief, Jeff Zucker, famous line about moving from analog dollars (cable) to digital pennies (web).

But the reality is that the MSO’s don’t pay those fees out of pocket. They pay a wholesale fee to the content owner. Then they package it up and resell it to the end user.

So in our modern day world where you can get fantastic online, the question is whether this analog model model makes sense anymore or in the near future.

I think great content will always be paid for. But who pays who?

I’ve been having this debate with several business associates for some time. At some point, MSOs won’t keep paying the escalating rates for programming.

Saul Hansell at the NYT highlights this issue in his last column. Here’s the punchline:

Over all, these companies are doing quite well, making more money than ever, with lower capital investment. But if there was one weak spot jumping out of the numbers, it was not their Internet business but their traditional TV service, where the cost of paying for content to put on all those channels is rising faster than subscription fees.

I get all of my financial news from the web. Seeking Alpha, Twitter, Covestor, google finance and the new york times. I get my sports content online as well thanks to the MLB.com, espn, twitter and blogs.

So at what point does Brian Roberts at Comcast tell NBC, “Hey, Jeff, I know you love those analog dollars. We do too. But we can’t pay you that much anymore. Our users are getting financial news elsewhere”.

I think it’s sooner than later.

In that case, content owners need to get there content everywhere and not limit it to a few select points of distribution.

Because the analog business model isn’t going to hold up forever.

(photo from flickr)