I Love Boxee's Product, But Not Its Business Prospects
I am still trying to understand the business strategy behind Boxee's announced move into the set-top box (CE / hardware) space. It's an already ultra-competitive field, in which the software company has no experience nor retail distribution relationships (that I am aware of).
Most likely, Boxee is simply slapping it's name on someone else's box, like Roku. For instance: a Boxee-branded Roku box with Boxee software as pre-installed OS. Roku manufactures, distributes, and helps market the product, and shares revenue with Boxee. That might work, since Boxee arguably has a stronger consumer brand than Roku. But still, Boxee will be competing with much more established brands in the set-top CE space, such as Xbox, Sony, Apple, TiVO, and (eventually) Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, etc.... And soon there will be a new generation of Internet-TV's from Samsung, etc...More fundamentally, however, I believe Boxee has a huge "core" challenge: disrupting the TV ecosystem from the "outside" is A LOT harder than disrupting the music ecosystem from the outside. Mega-funded Joost and Veoh failed trying, and even Apple has made very little traction so far. Why will Boxee succeed? I love Boxee's product, but not its business prospects.
2 comments
Nov 24, 2009
Mike Berkley said...
Sounds good, Avner. Thanks for responding. I think it makes a lot of sense to get your software on as many CE boxes as possible -- and in some cases as the exclusive "OS" for the box. The key will be making sure your CE partners are responsible for the distribution and marketing of the co-branded or Boxee-branded devices. There may also be good opportunities with TiVO (?) and Samsung and othe TV manufacturers.Good luck and I hope you get traction with CE manufacturers. Like I said, I love your product. I hope you can figure out how to make money while also keeping the content providers happy...
the Boxee platform would be a good fit for many CE companies making connected devices, and the idea is to try and get as many of these deals done as possible.
some will be an multi-purpose device running Boxee as one of its apps, some will be dedicated Boxee devices. with some partners will work closer than with others (in terms of product, branding, marketing, etc.)
the upcoming Boxee Box is the first (of hopefully) many connected devices running Boxee.