“The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has established a working group to develop a universal docking standard for portable devices, the US-centric organisation announced this week,” Tony Smith reports for The Register. “The move is being driven by Microsoft – at least, the software giant is the only company to be granted quotation space on the CEA press release, and there’s a Microsoft staffer in the working group’s chair. It’s not hard to see why. Having failed to beat the iPod using proprietary technology – the Windows Media format – it’s try to beat it using a sharper weapon: the open standard it defines.”
“Apple’s iPod owes its success to many factors, not least of which is the company’s decision to develop the player’s dock connector. Where other music player makers have simply stuck in a USB port and and left it at that, the proprietary dock connector has provided the perfect foundation for a whole range of iPod accessories that have, in turn, helped the small white player on its way to mainstream market dominance,” Smith reports.
Smith writes, “If Apple follows the standards process and adopts whatever specification the CEA team comes up with, it still finds itself up against competitors whose players have as many accessories as the iPod does and, worse, risks alienating owners of older iPods for whom potential purchases will fade away as the classic iPod dock connector becomes increasingly irrelevant. This is an issue for Apple because it’s a hardware company. It’s not an issue for Microsoft, because it sells software and as long as somebody makes hardware that uses its code, it wins. It has no vested interest in hardware beyond that need, whereas Apple’s success is predicated upon designing and selling great hardware.”
“Apple’s best option – ‘least-worse’ might be better – would be to co-opt the standards process by proposing its existing specification as the de facto standard,” Smith writes. “That way, at least, it’s not going to have to spend years ignoring the growing support for the rival specification, only to have to cave in to market forces and support it anyway. This way, it could also continue to earn royalty revenues, as it does with FireWire, for instance, but again loses the advantage it has gained to date from the iPod’s undeniably innovative dock concept.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader, “Stoo,” for the heads up.]
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In the end, open standards will always win. Apple can make all the money they want now, but they better get involved in this or they will lose out eventually.
I have always felt the iPod has a limited lifespan. 10 years at most. Eventually, portable players will be commodity items. Apple really has two choices. Milk it till it runs dry or make the iPod more open to developers and maybe risk losing a little marketshare now.
But with Apple wanting to charge fees for accessories and such, it seems to me that they have decided to milk it till it runs dry. Can’t say whether this is a better choice or not, but I do think this one has a dead end at some point. How many years is that? I don’t know.
Microsoft finally knows what it’s like to be the minority market share holder, and they don’t seem to like it.
It seems to me we have a standard to go along with the “Gold Standard” in MP3 players.
The truth is that nothing can touch iPod and its delivery/sales model.
Microsoft is willing to use whatever it can to slow Apple’s growth and lower its market share. Microsoft needs to understand that Apple’s “mind-share” is far more dangerous to Redmond.
~M
Wow, the egos of the yanks has grown. First it was the world series for baseball (2 countries). Now the “universal docking standard for portable devices, the US-centric organisation announced this week”.
Can’t wait to see what happens when the US takes over heaven and the other place.
Or as Bill Gates has been known to say to God “you are sitting in my chair”.
Microsoft and their buddies can make any sort of connector they want for their unpopular devices. There is absolutely no reason why Apple needs to listen to any of this pointless nonsense.
The days of Microsoft pushing around the hardware companies is gone. And, unless Microsoft can produce a stable, inherently secure, operating system within the next 12 months, Microsoft’s own days are numbered.
I don’t see the point in this useless exercise by Microsoft. Pretty much any open standard can be blunted by an adapter creating another cottage industry.
Non issue. There are lots of connectors that are “standards”, and yet, not every device carries all of these “standard” connectors. Who cares if the Apple connector is not the official standard, it’s the defacto standard.
Apple has such a head start, any new connector, standard or not, is just not going to get any traction.
@RoadWarrior: We’ll just take Heaven. Looks like Eurasia already has the corner on the market for “the other place.”
Yeah, Jeff, that’s why we control 95% of the market. Because open standards “always win.”
Bwahahahahahahahah!
luv,
BillyG
With the iPod dominating the market, any proposed universal standard will fail unless the iPod goes along with it. There are two ways this can play out.
1) Apple decides to go along with it, and it goes somewhere.
2) Apple tells the CEA where to go, and continues making the iPod dock connector as they always have. The other mp3 players all make theirs the same, and people continue to buy iPods just as they are now with no knowledge of any universal standard.
To the general public, iPod is the universal standard. I was at Best Buy over the weekend. They had an entire row devoted to mp3 players, and the only ones receiving any attention were the nano and 5G iPod. Move down the aisle a little, and the only accessories that are being looked at are the iPod accessories.
Billy, why did you name your company after your penis?
Yes, I am glad all men and women have a universal dock connector….
what this isn´t a sex chat forum?…sorry.
Yes, I am glad all men and women have a universal dock connector….
what this isn´t a sex chat forum?…sorry.
Yes, I am glad all men and women have a universal dock connector….
what this isn´t a sex chat forum?…sorry.
Yes, I am glad all men and women have a universal dock connector….
what this isn´t a sex chat forum?…sorry.
There already is a standard, non-proprietary connector that any device manufacturer can use, and it was even mentioned in the stupid article: USB.
After this Xmas season, there will be over 50 million iPods in circulation. Why would device manufacturers want to deal with ANOTHER interface to address 20% of the market? The low market share argument has always been used to explain why there is not as much software for the Mac as there is for Windows, and even viruses.
This is Microsoft just trying to keep themselves from becoming irrelevant in the digital music space.
It’s called USB. The iPod connector is not necessary for 3rd party crap to work with ‘iPod enabled’ devices. ALL new iPods are USB 2.0 only– a huge step backwards due to the lame hardware configuration of most Windoze PeeCees. Trading FireWire for USB 2 is like trading a Porsche for a Hyundai.
CEA? CEA!? Like consumers are going to buy whatever the CEA recommends. Now five years ago this might have been a threat to Apple but if 80% of consumers are buying one type of anything, it is the standard.
This will be another asterisk on a footnote in the appendix of MP3 player history.
I say Apple’s universal dock is already a standard, so recommending it as one to this new committee shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Let’s face it any type of universal dock will take some time to be adopted; even if the standard was introduced tomorrow. Let’s not forget the millions of media players with only a standard USB in/out port. A standard dock will make these device obsolete, or worse introduce a series of adapters and cables all sold separately.
Most of the other media players on the market, literally have no dock or stand or any of that. They don’t even have close to comparable body widths and heights. Take a look at almost any of the Rio’s http://system.s2gstore.com/site/RioAudio/mp3players.htm compared to Samsung http://www.cnet.com/4570-11467_1-31278883.html?tag=hggcat or Archos http://www.archos.com
That’s a lot of manufacture design revisions. First players would need to contain a connector (and unless that connectors a standard USB port) would require redesign or adaptors.
I want to say, Sony offers a dock for their device(s), but I can only honestly say that Apple is the only company that across the board offers a dock. But I’d pay to see Rio try to make Apple’s Universal Dock work with their RIo S35S http://system.s2gstore.com/site/RioAudio/RIO-28260015R.htm.
>Wow, the egos of the yanks has grown. First it was the world series for baseball (2 countries).>
Yes, and we play “football” with our hands. Figure that one out.
The “least-worst” option is what MS does all the time. Since MS is the defacto standard, it drives everyone to support it. Apple should do the same.
Oh, the irony!
Would it not be easy to retain the current dock to maintain backwards compatibility and all the benefits of controlling your own dock standard, but also provide a coverter which will enable the ‘new standard’ to interoperate. Best of both worlds.
I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to artificially prevent this by some means, but thats another story.
Tim Coughlin
http://timcoughlin.typepad.com
I’m all for an open standard – if it’s open Microsoft can’t then hijack it. Personally I would love to see a Universal standard for power sources. I’ve got dozens of portable devices with charges or just regular devices which are plugged in all the time and they all use different plugs, different voltages etc, etc. Half the time adaptors don’t even work from one device to the other when made by the same company.
1. Thousands more accessories (ones that don’t dock, like cases) for iPod than for anything else.
2. Adapters that go between the two connectors.
But I doubt it gets off the ground even if it gets approved. Apple’s connector just provides a ton of functionality that people won’t want to give up. Or do we think Microsoft will “get it right” too?
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Watch this get bogged down for years regardless.
I bought my new ’06 Scion xA partly because of the integrated iPod connection. The console has a jack to plug in an adapter cable. What I don’t know is if another player could develop another connector standard that could have a cable to work with this jack? But even if they could I don’t know that stereo manufacturers will want to include software to operate more than one player.
The irony is the stereo also plays MP3 CDs and WMA CDs but not AAC.
Road Warrior: “Wow, the egos of the yanks has grown. First it was the world series for baseball (2 countries).”
Road Warrior — Don’t worry. Baseball sucks. Even most Americans know it. And we invented it, ferchrissakes.
But tell me something: When’s the last time any of the rest of the world (except for those “2 countries”) fielded a genuine football team (as in, AMERICAN-style football)? When’s the last time they ever COULD?
Answer: NEVER!
You know why? Cuz you’re all two busy drinking your flaccid wine and eating your stinking cheese or forcing down your horrible brown shit that passes for beef [<cough> England <cough>] and just in general acting like a bunch of sissy, whining peaceniks. Get of yer asses and make yourselves useful and then maybe, oh just maybe, one day you too will be able to act like real nations.
Oh, and don’t tell me about your stupid-ass rugby players being tough. We don’t need a buncha toothless hooligans playing grab-ass in the middle of their scrum piles. And anyway, not a ONE of them could stand up for a single game in the NFL against a 6’3″ defensive lineman. They’d be pounded like so much sand. (We know, because we’ve actually let some of your kind into our league — but we’ll only let them be kickers!)
And don’t even get me started on your “soccer” (re: “football”) fans. Yaah, real buncha charmers you got there. Hey, here’s one for ya: When’s the last time a stadium full of “yank” fans enjoying a game was burned down by those very same fans? Or when’s the last time a massive riot broke out at an “ugly, violence-filled, disgusting American-style football game”? Gee, let me see, I know I have the answer right here some place — oh yeah . . . NEVER!!!!!!!
We “yanks” will take America, thank you. Now go eat some more cheese and bend over for the next dictator to take the world stage.