TiVo

VentureBlog discusses the lack of success of the TiVo personal video player. The TiVo (a PVR - Personal Video Recorder) allows you to record RV programs. It sounds in this way like a video recorder. You can however not buy tapes and view those. Thus the functionality is much more limited. The TiVo was very enthusiastically received four years ago, but since then has only sold some 800.000 systems, which corresponds to 1% market. This is not bad for a company who created its own market.

VentureBlog argues that TiVo is not a product, but a feature. And a feature should be built into other products. It is too complex to set up and to hard to explain to customers. TiVo seems to have realised this and started with a service “TiVo inside”. This allowed other companies to add TiVo to their product. TiVo then markets the slogan “TiVo inside”.

[by way of VentureBlog]