Charles on… anything that comes along

My column today for The Independent poses the question: why has the iPod got such a grip on the market, and what can rivals do? The answer (to the first bit): celebrity.

Consider Nicole Kidman and the iPod nano: one’s thin and famous, and the other.. no, hang on.

How would you stop Nicole Kidman from being famous? This may not seem like the sort of problem that you’re often faced with. But that, or a form of it, is the task facing the companies that want to take the iPod’s crown in the digital music player market.

Celebrity is a natural result of any market for attention. We can only pay attention to a limited number of people; so we focus on those who we find attractive, and who have interesting stuff happening to them. The problem for them then is to stay famous, which the top celebs achieve by arranging for photographers to capture “unguarded” moments.

There were already MP3 players such as the iPod some time ago:

they proliferated in the succeeding years, but made few inroads into the market. Then, in October 2001, Apple launched the iPod, to yawns from most analysts who thought it was a bit pricey. But a strange thing happened. The iPod got celebrity. Musicians, who already used Apples to mix their music, were early adopters. They had them, and a buzz started.

And lo, a celebrity was born - a technological one.

So what’s the lesson for rivals like Sony and Samsung, which have repeatedly insisted they will catch up with the iPod? I think it’s this: an aspiring actress wouldn’t aim to make Nicole Kidman un-famous; she would try to make herself more famous, by winning attention in her own right - not inviting comparisons.

Of course doing that requires thinking to what people want, which isn’t trivial. But that’s why they have the big-bucks designers, right?

Update 21.40: for an example of someone (a) not having the big-bucks designers (b) trying to be more famous than Kidman while starring in the same film (figuratively speaking; Kidman is the proxy for the iPod, geddit?) look no further than Dell and its “ditty”. Easiest learnt about by reading John Gruber “Rhymes with Ditty“.

I reiterate my point: you aren’t going to win this game by doing the same thing.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Sony completely loses the plot with "Network Walkman" (4 August 2004; score: 53.92%)
• Giant electronics company acquires small clue (23 September 2004; score: 48.16%)
• At last, Dave Winer is famous in Illinois, and all because of blocked email (26 August 2004; score: 44.31%)