we recently covered through a series of postings, the emerging trends and perspectives on consumer electronics industry through postings like,impact of broadband through Broadband Redefines Consumer Electronics Sector and covered the interesting development of Microsoft Vs. Nokia on the coming mobile wars. Russell Beattie writes, Its Game Over For Most Of Microsoft's Competitors In The Consumer Electronics Space Excerpts :
It's game over for a lot of Microsoft competitors, though they may not realize it yet. The decisive move was their MSN Video announcement which included deals with MTV as well as TiVo to make sure that TiVo To Go recordings play on Microsoft Mobile devices.Microsoft's DRM strategy and Windows Media WMA codec are going to allow them to have a massive advantage in the consumer electronics market, which includes everything from MP3 players, to mobile phones to your set-top box, to a host of other converged devices.Very soon anything you're able to record on your TiVo will be playable on your Windows Mobile device, the new MSN Video Downloads service (among others) will allow you to see television and movies, and the variety of integrated music stores will allow you to buy and play music. There's no competitor to this breadth of mobile media offerings right now or possible in the near future. It doesn't matter that Microsoft doesn't lead in music downloads right now, though if you combined all the different WMA music stores, it might come close to Apple's iTunes. What's important is that Microsoft *owns* the alternative to Apple and is already branching out to areas like movies and home-recorded content.
Russell concludes by saying, there needs to be a competing consortium of device manufacturers lead by Apple. Apple needs to license FairPlay soon and as widely as possible. If they're going to be a leader in the consumer electronics space not just in music players,tieups like the one with Motoroal are essential. The first step with Motorola was a good one. Otherwise, apple runs the risk of becoming a small niche player or generic device manufacturer. There is no difference between a Nokia and a Samsung if they're both running Windows Mobile? Really far reaching impact..The IT and CES world need to respond to this - Hats off to Microsoft - despite several criticisms on multiple fronts, they are repeatedly exhibiting ability to innovate( in some case immitate) and execute well.
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