Dell’s iPod? On Its Way. Music Industry, Where’s Yours?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dell is going to release a competitor to the iPod this fall. Dell tried this once before, but failed. What’s different?

Instead of simply selling a piece of hardware tied to someone else’s music service, as it did in 2003, Dell is working on software for a range of portable PCs that will let users download and organize music and movies from various online sources.

The music player Dell has been testing — the product’s name couldn’t be learned — features a small navigation screen and basic button controls to scroll through music play lists. It would connect to online music services via a Wi-Fi Internet connection, and Dell executives said they would likely price the model currently being tested at less than $100.

Bully for Dell. After showing off its new line of tiny PCs, Dell now has some street cred as far as design and innovation goes. Nothing close to Apple, but it’s a starting point. And if this mp3 player looks good and works well, Dell has a chance to dent Apple’s cool factor.

The real question though, is why isn’t the music industry trying to do something like this? Why let Dell, Apple or even Nokia earn the healthy margin on a gadget, while the music industry dies on music sales?

Building gadgets is totally different from selling music, but great companies adjust. Look at Major League Baseball. The stodgy old sport managed to create a technology company in 2001, MLBAM, and now MLBAM earns over $400 million in annual revenue.

The record labels have no market cap, no chance to borrow, so acquiring a small tech company is out of the question. They may have simply missed their chance, but if Dell can reintroduce a mp3 player, I find it hard to believe Universal-BMG couldn’t do something similar.

Record labels, take what’s left of your money, don’t sign 5 acts to absurd advances and put that money towards hiring a smart tech person who can build you a cheap device to sell your music. Its a long shot, but what other option do you have?

iPhone Voice Recognition and iPhone Lines (Still)

New story at BusinessWeek. Why use the tough touch keypad for the iPhone when you could just speak your emails or texts? Nuance, the leader in dictation software for PCs, is working on similar technology for the fancy phone. (Thats what I call an iPhone.) Rather than fumble with the touch screen, many enterprise users stick with the BlackBerry for its keyboard. Regardless of how many business apps Apple develops, business folk aren’t willing to endanger the main reason for using a BlackBerry–email. This creates an opportunity for a company like Nuance, who is working towards letting people speak their emails. I would link to the story but I can’t copy and paste the link and I’m writing this post with the fancy phone*.

Speaking of the FP, I’d been having trouble with the mic on the earphones. I went into the Apple store and they replaced them for me, no problem, no questions asked. While I was there I saw people are still waiting out front for the phone. Yikes! Photo below.

*Did some editing on the laptop. I forgot to save the changes I made to the draft as I worked on it in the iPhone. It really is tiring to use that tiny screen and that keyboard to type out long texts, so I just cheated and worked it using a full keyboard. My thumbs thanked me. Heres the BW link.

What is the New York Times Worth?

New story at BusinessWeek. I did a sum of the parts analysis of the New York Times Company and arrived at a troubling conclusion: The newspaper of record ain’t worth squat according to Wall Street. Why? The family stock structure worries people and investors just don’t see newspapers ever returning to glory any time soon.

What got left out of the story is even scarier. Lehman analyst Craig Huber targets the stock at $8 a share. At that price the newspaper is only valued at around $108 million. Yikes.

Google Android Fanboy Speaks!

Is the iPhone for the rich, while Android is for the masses? Nicholas Gramlich, founder of anddev.org, an online developer community for Android certainly thinks so. In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, he extols the virtues of Google’s in-development mobile operating system. Sounding like an Apple fanboy, he claims that Android will be loaded with “feature-rich applications,” explaining further, “we will definitely see a lot of location-aware and social-networking applications, that will try to be the social app for Android. I’ve seen so many that I cannot even count them.”

Social-networking and location-aware are hardly feature rich. With the iPhone’s low handset price and reasonable voice/data plan, I find it hard to believe that an Android run phone will be much cheaper. I believe carriers are making fat margins off data plans. The reason AT&T was willing to provide a hefty subsidy for Apple is because they know iPhone users go wild with the mobile web and emailing.

Gramlich also makes this weird claim, “I think Android will win over Symbian”, said Gramlich, “as there are so many companies behind the Open Handset Alliance.” Nokia is behind Symbian, which in and of itself, is a game ender. But they’ve also got every handset maker at their back, too. Plus, there are persistent rumors that Android will be folded into Symbian.

Android was an exciting idea last fall. But between the iPhone, Symbian and even the BlackBerry, it’s been blown away. Do we really need another mobile OS? Mobile developers already hate creating applications for six different operating systems. Adding another–especially one without a critical mass of users–will just frustrate them further.

Is it possible that Android should just stop now?

U.S. Airways: Not Flying On Empty?

I was emailed a link to this Philadelphia Inquirer story that ran last Monday disputing the idea that U.S. Airways planes are flying on empty:

Later that day, I received a US Airways message to employees that put the pilots’ complaints into perspective by adding information about its aircraft-fueling practices.

Adding credibility to US Airways’ position, the union that represents its flight dispatchers called the pilots’ claims “nothing more than hot air.” Dispatchers, who, like pilots, are licensed by the FAA, are a critical but unsung part of flight planning. They share responsibility with the captain in deciding how much fuel to carry.

“I can say unequivocally that there has been absolutely no pressure on the dispatchers at US Airways to reduce the fuel loads,” Don Wright, president of the dispatchers’ Transport Workers Union local, said in a statement.

In US Airways’ message, the company said that while the FAA requires all airlines’ flights to arrive with 45 minutes of fuel left, “we use 60 minutes of arrival fuel as a minimum and currently average 100 minutes in actual operation.” The airline said that it found that the eight pilots called in for a meeting with the training department were “adding fuel to their dispatched fuel loads much more frequently than their peers.”

To the pilots, being called on the training department carpet feels like intimidation. To the company, as its message said, it was “entirely appropriate” to try to understand if the eight captains were experiencing something different from other pilots.

Another question is whether this isn’t a part of the long-running labor dispute between US Airways and its pilots. It’s putting it mildly to say many pilots are exasperated that the company and the union can’t reach an agreement on a new contract, almost three years after the America West merger.

As airlines try to save on fuel costs, there have been other reports of transatlantic jets of U.S. carriers landing with less than an adequate cushion of fuel. But none of the reports I know of concerned US Airways flights.

The article goes on to question the news media’s ability to accurately cover this event, particularly CNN’s Larry King Live.

Steve Ballmer: Good Luck Yahoo, We’ll Spend Our Cash In Other Ways

Microsoft had its financial analyst meeting today, hot on the heels of Steve Ballmer’s frank memo sent out yesterday, announcing the departure of Kevin Johnson, president of Platform & Services Division for Microsoft, as well as organizational changes at Microsoft.

Ballmer spoke in relatively reserved tones, particularly in regards to Yahoo:

Yahoo!, for us, was always a tactic, not a strategy…And at the right price and with the right speed of operation, it was a heck of a good tactic. At the wrong price and if it had had to stretch out over two administrations of regulatory review, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it was not a good tactic.

So we approached it, we had a firm time deadline because we wanted to be able to get our regulatory review in without administration shifts in Europe and the U.S. We offered, they didn’t like, we left.

Is it possible that Ballmer really thought this deal would be passed before Obama or McCain took over? I’m no M&A expert, nor have I spoken with one, but I find that unbelievable. A $44 billion deal that drastically changes the landscape of the Internet would take much longer than a year, especially considering Google’s increasing Washington clout.

Ballmer didn’t present this speech to a stooge like me, he talked to the people that eat, breathe and sleep Microsoft and its financial minutiae. Who is he trying to fool? Was he just waffling on this deal or did he really believe what he said?

He also took pot shots at Yahoo:

So it had to be a tactic, not a strategy, and it was, and we approached it in I think a reasonably disciplined way. I know Yahoo! likes to characterize somewhat differently. We had a set of principles, we talked about them, it didn’t work out. Fine, we’re done. We can move on. Does that mean that nobody will ever talk to anybody again? I suspect the answer to that question is also no. It’s a long time in a big world, but we’re comfortable proceeding as we are on our own with our people, with our strategy, independent innovation and I think what we really still have in search and advertising is a two-horse race.

Yahoo! will stay around. I’m sure they’ll find their path. And yet, for the kind of ante we’re taking about in this game, I think it really is just the two of us.

Ante was Ballmer’s catch phrase. Repeatedly he said, “Ante, focus, reinvent.” Since Microsoft didn’t spend $44 billion on Yahoo, it has alot of “ante” to play with. In the above quotation, Ballmer says it’s just Google and Microsoft in the search game. He completely discounts the number two company–Yahoo. He backhands them saying, “I’m sure they’ll find their way.”

Microsoft been working on a web strategy for 13 years and still can’t make a profit from search. Maybe it should try to find its way before patronizing the company it lusted after for half a year.

Microsoft Shareholders Speak!

New story at BusinessWeek. As the Micro-Hoo debacle has unfolded, we’ve heard plenty from Yahoo! shareholders, but not that much from Microsoft shareholders. Since the offer was first made public Microsoft’s stock has plummeted 20%, a much greater drop than the NASDAQ or Google, for comparison. Does this mean investors don’t like the deal? Most seem to agree with the deal in principle and they seem to trust Steve Ballmer, but their patience is wearing thin.

iPhone Test

Testing the new wordpress app for the iPhone. Sorry to waste your time.

This picture was taken with my phone at the David Byrne “play the building” art installation.

Swisher Interviews Kevin Ryan

Kara Swisher was in New York today. First she stopped by Tech Ticker to weigh in on the Microsoft-Yahoo debacle, then she swung over to Alley Corp to interview my old boss. I’m not sure we talked even once, he didn’t sign the checks, and I was just an intern but in the grand scheme of things, Kevin Ryan was my boss.

Anywho, Kevin Ryan talks about building his internet businesses. Somebody needs to get Kara a mic, the audio on this thing stinks.

until I figure out video, click here.

U.S. Airways: Flying On Empty

The AP has some scary news for certain fliers:

The pilots union for US Airways said Wednesday the airline is pressuring pilots to use less fuel than they feel is safe, in order to save money.

US Airways (LCC, Fortune 500) Captain James Ray, a spokesman for the US Airline Pilots Association, which represents the airline’s 5,200 pilots, said eight senior pilots and the union have filed complaints with the Federal Aviation Administration.

UPDATE: Maybe they aren’t flying on empty?