Convergence Industries Sea Change, part XXIV
Some people read The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs because it’s funny, clever and pointed. Fair enough. However, buried among the rants and tap-dancing are some profoundly cogent observations on the convergence industries: electronics, software, entertainment, telecom, and information. Case in point is the observation that “Steve” makes on where the music industry finds itself:
…Ironically the mistake the major labels made was the same one that IBM made when it gave the DOS franchise to Microsoft nearly 30 years ago. They were faced with a new market that they didn’t understand. They had a piece of work that they couldn’t do on their own or didn’t want to do on their own and they didn’t view it as critical or important, so they outsourced it to a partner. The partner turned that seemingly unimportant work into a way to accrue power and create a monopoly and control the industry. Today in the music business we’re about where IBM and Microsoft were in 1989, when IBM finally got hit with the clue stick and realized what Microsoft was doing.
How will it play out this time? I don’t know, honestly. But I like our chances.
Read the whole thing. ..bruce..
Category: Apple, Information Technology, Main
About the Author (Author Profile)
Webster is Principal and Founder at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at bwebster@bfwa.com, or you can follow him on Twitter as @bfwebster.Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
