Motorola iRadio Launch at NAB
Well the first day of NAB is over and I still can’t sleep. Clearly the flight from Australia has done something unusual to me. Wide awake at 2 am. Oh well.
My focus
is radio, so I confess that there is a lot of exciting multimedia hype
that I am just not interested in right now (though I wold have been 10
years ago). The contrast between the south hall multimedia exhibits,
brimming with hoardes of people, and the north hall radio brodcasting
ghost-town is sobering. These are technical weenies, though. It makes
sense.
Aside from meetings, The Motorola iRadio launch party was the biggest
thing on my agenda today. I talked to Dave Ulmer at length and was
amazed at how complex their offering is to understand, and what a
twisted value proposition they have. If you can’t explain to a
consumer the basics of what a product is without four minutes of intro
and 10 bullet items of jargon, it simply
isn’t worth considering. The first thing I asked him is "so what
radio stations do you have?" I’m not sure he was expecting the
question and hesitated. I immediately knew their product was a
technology product, not an entertainment product.
Dave didn’t really seem very customer-oriented and really loved talking
about the party. I kept asking him about the demonstration and he told
me "just check around inside the house". The party is at the "NextGen" home of the future exhibit outside the front door of NAB. I sure wish I was staying there instead of the hotel I’m in. Very nice.
The party sure was great. Big outdoor area, intense glitzy high-energy live music. Great Margaritas, beer, BBQ meatballs and jumbo shrimp. They may not understand consumer needs, but they sure know how much people at Las Vegas Conferences love to party!
I looked around the house and found a very energetic Motorola evangelist for the
product. I pressed him on the demo. He said I could come by any time
over the next two days. They were having "connection difficulties"
tonight. I’m serious! If I ever have a product launch where I cannot
demonstrate the product, I hope somebody gives me a swift kick in the
head.
Here’s the quick take:
- It only works with Motorola phones.
- He described the difference between "low audio quality
time-critical content" and "high quality cacheable content" and said
that the cacheable content (such as SmoothJazz radio) was downloaded
while your phone is charging and then you can listen to it
later (SD card stores this, so of course 1GB is the max capacity… comes with 256MB card). The
time-critical content such as news and sports was delivered by "the
carrier". I pressed him on "which carriers" and he kept going back to
the technology topics. So, you can download cached radio while you
charge, and listen to news and sport live. - It costs $7 per month for 300 radio stations, which tells me
something immediately because I know a lot about radio offerings. It’s
genre playlists and a few gems. It will take you three weeks to figure out
what to put on your 6 presets. - But wait! Then he told me that the "low-quality" news and sports content… that’s
the carrier’s opportunity for revenue. So, I see, you pay $7 for the
service, but you’re going to also pay the carrier for live content.
So, how much does this really cost? Who knows? - There is a Rube Goldberg inspired configuration you can use in
your car. You get a device which "acts like a CD player" and your
car’s audio system connects to it. Your phone communicates with this
in-car device so you can hear low and high-quality content over your
car stereo. - Did I mention how it only works on Motorola phones?
Beware of technology companies trying to pretend that they are content
companies.
Somewhere in Motorola, I think somebody has allocated some
money to protect the old iRadio tradmark they have had for years. Some
cool people who love the glamor of entertainment more than the drudgery
of understanding consumer needs scored some budget and threw together
this product. It’s not even good technology. How much radio can you
really keep without more storage? And if I were their news content
partner, I would be a bit put-off by Motorola’s insistence on referring
to it as "low quality" content.
Best of luck, Motorola.
Good Margaritas though! Thanks.
Tags: Web/Tech
(heard about you, read about you , think I even applied for a job with you once – this was a long time ago)
wandered over here from Andy Grace’s site thought I would look you up – came across the blog
Love your description of Motorola …….
Seems to be the exact same problem that the net faced in the start – and to be honest only justifies a position I keep holding that we are doomed to repeat history
Apple may have got information design, user design (personally hate the word user or consumer but that is a whole other story) slightly right with the ipod but from perception the past is repeating it’s self
I have one question from some one like yourself whose been there done it, and done it over again, and again etc…
why don’t companies like this consult information scientists (not the computing information scientists but those more interested in information use etc….) in the development process these people have been studying information for years, but most are never truly deployed and only really in knowledge management or information agaencies than in design and development. Just a curiosity it seems an under used resource field they is screaming out for use by this sector.
To people who develop products like iRadio, research from the computing field is rarely of interest. The main reason is that computing research is rarely people-oriented, and rarely aimed at understanding current trends but more aimed at understanding fundamental laws which make information useful and influence behavior.
Marketing people should listen customers, and understand their needs. That’s what fails most often. Computer reserach won’t help.
maybe i shouldn’t have said information science but rather information studies this is not computer research although yes some of it is but rather what Librarians, knowledge managers, record managers etc.. have been doing for years before computers were even thought of.
I am probably not explaining it well but see here is the problem I have with computing people and marketing people. There is information studies field that has been tsitting there for decades and it is continually dimissed as just computing research or stuff for a library
It is so much more………. it’s basis was built on understanding need , use of infgormation and not from a marketing perspective – I just think it is a very under utalised area.
I may be misinteruppting your comment but I beg to disagree that informations science or rather information studies is computer research . It’s just seems like field that is dimissed just like you did it’s not computing research it’s information research
Ok get of soap box and end my waffle for the day.
I Appreciate the feedback
and do enjoy the work spidereye produce……….
I was googling your name to ensure I had the correct spelling to look you up in Skype…when I found this site.
That’s all. It’s good. It’s interesting. It’s, well, it feels like I’m looking through your closet or something I shouldn’t be doing.
Apple may have got information design, user design (personally hate the word user or consumer but that is a whole other story) slightly right with the ipod but from perception the past is repeating it’s self