McNealy holds hope for 'iPod moments'

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What's an iPod moment?

Let's define what an 'iPod Moment' is. For Apple, the iPod was a sharp departure from its traditional business as part of a larger strategy to take advantage of a clearly growing market in digital music. It was a well designed product that was innovative and leading in the market. It happened to complement Apple's traditional business, desktop and laptop computers.

So the key elements are: 1) sharp departure from traditional business; 2) taking advantage of a growing market (rather than seeking a create a new market); 3) innovative and leading in both design and implementation; and 4) supportive of the traditional business line.

I don't believe any of the six examples listed in the article qualify.

1) Galaxy x86: this is a product designed for a mature market that does not appear to be greatly innovative.

2) UltraSPARC IV+: this *is* Sun's traditional business.

3) Solaris 10: this is a trailing edge attempt to capitalize on the open source movement.

4) StorageTek acquisition: Apple didn't acquire a company to innovate the iPod. Sun's been trying to get into the storage market for years with little success. Storage, again, is a mature market. (And this isn't R&D money, rather M&A -- mergers and acquisitions.)

5) Java Enterprise System: again, Sun's been trying to make money off of Java in the enterprise for years. There's no reason to believe that this effort will be any more successful than its NetDynamics acquisition, iPlanet (its joint venture with Netscape) or Sun ONE.

6) Sun Ray: again, this is a product that Sun has been trying to push for a long time. The market is not there yet, and may never be.

None of these are iPod moments, but rather more of the same. It's time for a true visionary to take over at Sun because the current leaders are not that.

Posted by: sxn_z   Posted on: 09/26/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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