Seeing how Apple’s negotiating stance is with Cable and Content providers for Apple TV & how Google did the same w/ Issuing banks, which pretty much amounts to : “Allow us to take over your relationship with your customers” and “Let us repackage your offering” and finally “Sit still while we turn you in to a dumb pipe”, I gotta ask – Is this a case of Disruptors becoming dumber or Disruptees becoming smarter? I mean, everyone on the planet has read Clayton Christensen’s book by now. Who just sits there and waits to be made irrelevant anymore?
Afterall, its a question of survival. And these guys, more than anyone else have figured out how to build a wide moat, by surrounding themselves with copyrights on the content they have created. So for Apple, wouldn’t it be better to build and ship something, whip customers in to a frenzy and then go for the cable/content provider’s jugular? Else, irrespective of your current clout, you bring very little leverage in to those negotiations and these guys – they can smell it on you. Google certainly made that mistake by thinking it was going to be embraced with open arms, and the least – welcomed as liberators. Yet hobbled today from all sides by both partners and current payment rails, it has ground to a halt. But it had little choice in what it could do to galvanize the payments industry. Apple could do better or at the very least, do a better job at packaging the lie.
What do you think?
