{"id":4471,"date":"2011-08-19T03:45:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T11:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=4471"},"modified":"2011-08-19T03:45:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T11:45:14","slug":"webos-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2011\/08\/19\/webos-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"webOS Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Huh? What&#8217;s that? And why is this important to me?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll speak English. webOS is Palm. Which failed in its last iteration as a handset manufacturer and ran HP&#8217;s tablet until today, when both were killed.<\/p>\n<p>The reason this is important is because in tech, we&#8217;ve only got one winner. Everybody gravitates to one platform and the rest die or are marginalized.<\/p>\n<p>But what about Android you say?<\/p>\n<p>Android was helped by a quirk of fate. The unavailability of the iPhone on carriers other than AT&amp;T. It filled a niche which is slowly evaporating, look at today&#8217;s report showing the decline of Android at Verizon, the provider that championed the service: <\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px;\">\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/macdailynews.com\/2011\/08\/18\/verizons-android-share-declines-significantly-following-iphone-4-for-verizon-launch\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Verizon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Android share declines significantly following iPhone 4 for Verizon launch\">Verizon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Android share declines significantly following iPhone 4 for Verizon launch<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sure, Android&#8217;s free to the manufacturer, but every device is different and there&#8217;s no oversight of app quality and iOS is just safer and easier to use, never mind the fact you can get your questions answered at the Genius Bar, don&#8217;t underestimate the power of customer service.<\/p>\n<p>But what&#8217;s fascinating is computer hardware has turned into the entertainment business. Where hits and failures are determined overnight. Takes only a weekend to know if a movie&#8217;s gonna make it, really only a day, and not a whole hell of a lot longer when it comes to music. Hell, HP&#8217;s TouchPad was only introduced this summer!<\/p>\n<p>So this means we&#8217;re gonna have one streaming service in America. Just like there&#8217;s only one iTunes and one iPod and one iPad. Sure, those three are Apple products, but Apple learned it&#8217;s not so much about being first as being right, because you depend on your customers to sell your product, and word of mouth online is instant.<\/p>\n<p>And people know if your album is good or bad just that fast.<\/p>\n<p>Despite all the buzz on the Jay-Z\/Kanye album, all the reports of digital sales, reviews have been lukewarm, it won&#8217;t have the staying power of Adele&#8217;s &quot;21&quot;. Sure, it will support a tour, but could it be in stadiums, like the country artists?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it turns out despite the killing of rock and roll radio stations we live in a rock and roll world. That&#8217;s the sound of America. Not only of classic rock, but today&#8217;s country music. They might throw in a banjo or a fiddle, if you listen real hard you might find country roots, but today&#8217;s country music is really yesterday&#8217;s rock and roll. And country dominates. Hell, that woman in Sugarland was a rocker before she went country.<\/p>\n<p>The point is don&#8217;t listen to the press. Top Forty is a sexy story, but if you think Katy Perry has one tenth of the staying power of Tayor Swift, you&#8217;re myopic. And Kenny Chesney&#8217;s hit radio days may be running on fumes, he doesn&#8217;t dominate like he used to, but he can still sell tickets, in stadia.<\/p>\n<p>So if you want to go for domination, play rock. Call it country, whatever you want, but feature those guitars and a big chorus and go for it.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re playing any other kind of music, you&#8217;re niche.<\/p>\n<p>But that does not mean you&#8217;re dead. You can grow. Even though you might hit a wall. Because people might only buy one phone, but they&#8217;ll enjoy multiple kinds of music.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&#8217;re playing for all the marbles, if you&#8217;re all in, employing the monster hype, you&#8217;re either gonna succeed or fail, and odds are you&#8217;re gonna tank.<\/p>\n<p>No one&#8217;s gonna be talking about Jeff Bridges&#8217;s album a month from now. Hell, they won&#8217;t even be talking about it a week from now, except to report the anemic sales number which will immediately deflate to zero.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got to be in it for the long haul. Nobody&#8217;s gonna create apps for the dead HP TouchPad and nobody wants to follow an act that isn&#8217;t spreading roots. And you&#8217;ve got to be great. The HP tablet was really good, but it wasn&#8217;t as great as the iPad.<\/p>\n<p>Are you as great as the iPad? Are you undeniable?<\/p>\n<p>If not, you&#8217;re not going to dominate, sorry.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Huh? What&#8217;s that? And why is this important to me? I&#8217;ll speak English. webOS is Palm. Which failed in its last iteration as a handset manufacturer and ran HP&#8217;s tablet until today, when both were killed. The reason this is important is because in tech, we&#8217;ve only got one winner. Everybody gravitates to one platform [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-1a7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4473,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471\/revisions\/4473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}