Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Friday 23 January 2009, 5:00 PM
Microsoft's mangled music manifesto
In a stunningly gormless interview with PC Pro, Microsoft UK's mobile chief Hugh Griffiths assumes the unenviable task of defending the company's new mobile music strategy. I say strategy; I mean joke.
Tracks will cost £1.50 each. They will be so DRM-ridden that they will only ever be able to play on the device to which they are downloaded when bought. This, at a time when even Apple has finally cast aside the digirights chains.
Answering a question that I imagine was expressed more as a splutter, Griffiths defends Microsoft's increasingly isolated adherence to DRM as being for "people who just want to listen to the track on their mobile alone".
"They certainly tell us that they like listening to music while they are out and about, on their mobile phones," he says, sounding a little like the middle-aged aunt who insists she's down with the kids. Then comes this corker, in response to the question, "Can you really expect people to buy music that's locked to a device they upgrade every 12 to 18 months?"
"I didn't realise phones were churning that quickly in the marketplace these days."
What, seriously? Do you actually own a mobile phone? Jeez, good job you're not some senior mobile guy within Microsoft. Oh, wait.
Add to that gems such as "At the moment, to be honest with you, we don't have the functionality in-house to provide a mechanism for transferring between mobile phones and PC", and I think we have a pretty good idea where Microsoft is in this whole handheld telephony shindig. Nowhere near where the broader consumer market is, that's for sure.
So, bring on Mobile World Congress, and bring on Stevie B, who's going to tell us everything's OK and Microsoft has finally figured it all out. Right, Steve? You're not just trying to target clueless customers who have more money than sense, right? Steve?
PreviousComments on this post
Very worrying for Microsoft.
"Can you really expect people to buy music that's locked to a device they upgrade every 12 to 18 months?"
"I didn't realise phones were churning that quickly in the marketplace these days."
Oh. Tonnes of research, you can tell.
For the forseeable future Apple will continue to rule doiminant with their iPhone.
I really can't see Hugh Griffiths keeping his job for long.
That depends on whether Griffiths came up with the business model - I sincerely doubt he did. I suspect the poor guy was just thrown into the position of defending the indefensible.
How totally Wierd!! And when you consider there are so many avenues and alternatives when it comes to digital music and mp3 players. I think I'll be sticking with my sony walkman and my huge CD collection. Right now I'm going through the pain of uploading albums into my sky drive. I say pain because it's a file by file process, but ultimately worth it, and I should say purely for my own backup purposes.
Wow, clueless. How long has that guy been in the business? He get hired yesterday?
There was a story a few years back that a memo came down on the MS Redmond campus that the use of iPods inside the building was forbidden. I never knew whether to believe it or not, maybe this is a strange confirmation of that.
In response to yor comment David, I suspect so too. It's very easy for a big company to pick an employee to defend their product/s, and like you said in the article, make a statement afterwards to ensure the customers aren't worried.
This is the problem with Microsoft - they seem to be very good at creating a product and selling it, but not necessarily taking already existing products from rival companies and saying:
Right, what does it do, how does it do it, and how can we make it better than it already is?
