Wednesday, July 19, 2006
The Seattle Times: Argo Aims Guns at More Than iPod
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 01:00 PM
Being named Jason, I can't help but think highly of a product that is named after the ship that carried the Greek hero on his mythical quests. More than that, however, I'm interested in seeing what Microsoft can do in this arena if they really take off the gloves. Microsoft is a massive company with billions in the bank, and a huge amount of R&D efforts - yet most of that money sits unused, and most of that R&D is offered up to partners with encouraging words of "Hey, maybe if you added this to your product...". With so many products, whether it be laptops, Tablet PCs, Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs, or Smartphones, Microsoft can only advise their partners on how to make the product better. Then their partners turn around and decide to save 90 cents and the out of box experience is second fiddle to the iPod.
Now I'm not saying that Microsoft will have perfect execution on this, but I do feel that with every Microsoft product I've seen (keyboards, mice, Xbox, wireless routers) the overall experience and quality has been very high. Can they replicate this success with the Argo? What will their partners such as iRiver and Samsung do if they're suddenly competing with Microsoft? It will be an interesting year, that's for sure.