This article was written by Rob Reynolds and originally published on 7/5/10 at The Xplanation
http://blog.xplana.com/2010/07/what-textbook-publishing-companies-can-learn-microsofts-latest-mistake/
 Written by Rob Reynolds on the topic of Feature Content, Future of Textbooks
One of the ho-hum, not-so-surprising announcements last week was Microsoft’s decision to cancel its Kin smartphone line. After all, Microsoft releases and cancels products all the time. What made this particular news noteworthy was the fact that Microsoft only released the phones two months ago. “That’s a record-breaking quick end to a product, as far as I am concerned,” said Michael Cronan, a designer who helped drive the branding of products like Kindle for Amazon and TiVo. “It did seem like a big mistake on their part.”
Microsoft is actually facing a number of problems. First, it has failed to attract a younger generation of developers into its platform. In addition, the company has not attracted the imaginations of a younger demographic of consumer. Most problematic, perhaps, is Microsoft’s general lack of company focus when it comes to products.
It used to be that the Redmond company was clear about its products and their purposes. The company was about driving revenues to its two main lines of business — Microsoft OS and Microsoft Office. When it first introduced a mobile platform, the purpose was about driving enterprise business for its flagship products, not about getting into the smartphone race per se.
The bottom line is that diversification is only a good idea if it is part of a coherent and focused product vision.
Today, the three big contenders for Web technology dominance are Google, Amazon, and Apple. They have the most established lines of revenue and the clearest focus when it comes to product purpose. In the case of Google, they are happy to promote any new product as long as it contributes positively to their search and Web indexing monopoly. Amazon is also well diversified, but their business tributaries must all feed into their core identity as the leader in Web retail. And finally, there’s Apple. The Cupertino company is all about its own ecosystem. Every move it makes, from the iPad to Apple TV, targets the conversion of more Apple faithful, people who are willing to buy into a complete array of Apple hardware and software.
We can see great examples of these respective strategies in the e-book race. This week Amazon released a version of Kindle for Android devices as well as a new Web based-book preview option. With these announcements, Amazon users can now search for, preview, purchase, and read e-books across all major devices. Better yet, every time a user goes to purchase a Kindle book they are presented with the entire Amazon inventory of goods. As if this weren’t enough, Amazon also announced its extended Kindle Digital Text Platform with a 70% royalty option for authors and publishers. This program will serve to drive new content and revenue channels to Amazon’s retail site.
Google’s answer to e-books is its upcoming Google Editions release. The platform will allow users to find e-books through Google’s powerful search engine and then push them to the bookstore or publisher of their choosing to purchase the book. Once the purchase has been made, users will gain access to a Google e-book version that will play on any device. Google will have deals with publishers, like Amazon and Apple, but their big play is a partnership with independent booksellers via a partnership with ABA. Ostensibly, Google will allow these businesses to offer the same features as Amazon with Google doing all the heavy lifting. What does Google get from all this? More search business and advertising.
So, what can textbook publishers learn from these successful examples? Simply this — diversified product revenues are only valuable if they are part of a focused and strategic vision for product identity. In other words, in the digital age of publishing product flexibility is only part of the requirement for success. Primarily, this means that textbook publishing companies cannot lose sight of their core value — content.
In spite of the nomenclature — textbook publisher — these companies’ value is not tied to a specific print or digital form called the textbook.
In spite of the need to support different content distribution platforms, their real value is not to be found in classroom or institutional technologies like homework management systems or clicker devices.
In spite of current opportunities related to integrating content to performance evaluation and learning outcomes, assessment is not part of the core value for these publishers.
Like Microsoft, textbook publishers do have a core product — content — and future success means not diverting resources or fragmenting visions for products that do not have content as their primary DNA.
Textbook publishers should study the examples of Google, Amazon, and Apple. They should look to expand market share via product diversification and flexibility, bot only if such diversification strengthens their core product value and focus.
 
 
This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Feature Content, Future of Textbooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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