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Comment by badmash69 | Hacker News Reader

I respectfully disagree with Steve's assertion about Tivo's issues. Blackberry had a huge advantage : it had truly pioneering technology and competitors did not emerge for quite a while. Tivo, although very cool, did not have huge technological head start that could sustain it. TV cards for computers had existed before Tivo; you had the media center PC, Save TV, Hauppage and , my favorite, MythTV. All of these were positioned as an alternative to VCRs. Had Tivo positioned itself as better VCR that sold at $800, it would have been laughed out of the market.They could have locked in deals with cable cos and Dishnetwork -- they chose to compete/sue and failed miserably . Therefore , it was not the positioning that mattered here; it was poor go-to-market strategy.

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Yeah - Tivo's advantage was that their interface was light years ahead of the competition. But you can't explain that easily. People who actually used my Tivo for a few hours thought it was amazing, but it's hard to get that word out.

Yet somehow Apple managed to translate great UX into $

The iPhone has two massive things in its advantage:

1) It's made by Apple. If the Tivo had been made by Apple it would have sold vastly better.

2) You can carry it around with you, and let people play with it in public. When the iPhone first came out every time someone got theirs out they were surrounded by people wanting to have a play. Tricky to do that with something that's plugged in under your TV.

My point was that it was neither marketing nor sexiness that was the root cause of failure. It was simply that most TVs are already plugged into cable cos or Dishnetwork boxes. They had an opportunity to make a deal with the "gatekeepers of TV". They chose to fight and had their ass handed to them.

Also note that Apple entered the smartphone market after securing a deal from AT&T to subsidize the cost of the phone. That was their execution strategy and it delivered.

Oh, absolutely. They also made bad decisions.

But they completely flopped here in the UK, where the culture of cable/dish TV was much lower. And that was down purely to not getting their message out.

"1) It's made by Apple. If the Tivo had been made by Apple it would have sold vastly better."

It really wasn't that long ago that Apple was the pariah of the technology world. iPod might be a better comparison. At the time they introduced iPod, the people buying Apple products because it was Apple was a small, rabid cult following, not a sizable part of the general public.

I think the existence (and meager performance) of the Apple TV works against point one.

Steve Jobs: "The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months. The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there’s no way to do that….The TV is going to lose until there’s a viable go-to-market strategy. That’s the fundamental problem with the industry. It’s not a problem with the technology, it’s a problem with the go-to-market strategy….I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby." - at D8 conference earlier this year. http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/

Wow - my respect for Steve Jobs just went up an order of magnitude.

It's also remarkable how little success they've had, even though : (a) the verb "to Tivo" applies to any DVR; (b) lots of discussion about "my Tivo thinks I'm gay"; and (c) great product placement on Sex in the City.

Personally, when they decided to lock up the system (predating GPL3) I put the company in the AVOID column : not a good step for a tech company to alienate potential enthusiasts.

I think that part of the problem is the "verbing" of their brand. Nowadays even my grandparents (who don't even have a web connection) have a DVR, but most people don't know the difference between the DVR they get from Comcast and an actual Tivo. Since most people use the word 'Tivo' to describe all DVR's this education problem is incredibly tough to overcome.

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