Matt's Blog

Product Differentiation

May 13th, 2007

Going to the gym is boring, taking the Tube is boring – I need something to pass the time. I’ve been taking a book to work for ages, because I can’t stand reading the Metro any more. It was fun occasionally, but its relentless lack of well-balanced or interesting journalism forced me to find something else. Also, I really hate the ink that rubs off on your hands.

On the other hand, books are great. They’re lightweight, low power, high resolution and engrossing. Sadly, they also require a great deal of room (compared to what’s available on the rush-hour Tube, anyway) and both hands to turn the pages. This is also the problem at the gym – can’t read and use the cross trainer at the same time. So I’ve been looking for something that’ll take away the boredom with the minimum of space, hassle and the maximum of entertainment. What I’ve realised is that no one product will do it all…

First item is the near ubiquitous Apple iPod Video. It stores tons of music, plays videos and some games too. However, its fairly pricey and the games aren’t that good, which isn’t surprising as the iPod wasn’t designed for that.

Second, the Sony PSP seems a lot better at the games and movies as it has a bigger screen. But sadly, lets itself down on the music side as it doesn’t have enough storage to have a complete music library, you’d have to take a selection with you every day. However, its a bit cheaper – but this doesn’t include the memory sticks, games, etc… that you’d need to buy. The screen size is physically larger than the iPod’s and the resolution is higher, but Sony have crippled the movie player so that it can’t play the full resolution.

Finally, the Nintendo DS is an awesome games machine, with no inbuilt ability to play music or videos. But with the addition of a Datel “Games ‘n’ Music” its capable of taking a memory card. However, there is very little information about what video formats are supported and the screen is smaller than either the iPod or the PSP. Nintendo always did have the best games, but the least capable hardware. The DS plus G’n'M card comes out about as expensive as the PSP.

While trying to decide which of these was the best for me, I was wishing that one of them would be just “obviously better” than the others, and wondering why this wasn’t the case. But it is simple; by Apple, Sony and Nintendo differentiating their products – iPod is the media player, PSP the jack-of-all-trades and DS the games machine – they all get to sell all of them. If any one of these competed directly with the another it would be a zero-sum game as they’d both be competing for a share in the same market. If they differentiate and compete “obliquely” by having similar capabilities, but a different focus, they can all sell in the same market.

Basically, to get what I want I’m going to have to buy all three. Or make a decision that one feature is more important to me than any of the others.

Entry Filed under: Tech