It just amazes me how companies can be so early to market… hey, it has happened to me a couple of times already…
Today I read about how Video-on-demand is to break $10bn barrier on 2010. Wow, 2010… It was 1995 when I was at IBM working on the AIX VideoCharger multimedia streaming server for video and audio streaming over the Internet and NTSC.
We were very excited about what were doing back then – it was cool, bleeding-edge stuff; advanced networking and protocols, device drivers with concepts such as zero-copy, playback techniques and APIs, players, 64-bit high-performance file systems, and content management software. Many patents were produced by our group with my contributions to the IP portfolio in the areas of networking, file transfers, and playlist processing.
In any case, we were early by around 8 years — for video streaming technology to really take off we needed decent downlink capabilities at a reasonable price… we needed today's broadband! And as we know today, it was not until recently, until the last couple of years that broadband really hit homes….
Five years later same thing repeated, but this time in wireless — we had products and cool stuff back then, but once again, too early, this time 2-3 years too early — let's blame the Bubble!
And these repeats happen because technology adoption, especially for disruptive technologies, is slow, because it takes time to refine them, it takes time for “dependant” technologies to come along, because it takes time to make it all cost-effective.
A company's success is truly tightly coupled to timing — having your product at the right time is as important as the idea/product itself! And the truth is that it is never too late to begin working in your ideas — you don't have to be first to market, just be ready at the right time — you can learn from others before you, and improve on them. Today we see this with Google (vs. Altavista, Yahoo!, etc.). And we are seeing this with video on demand — you may have heard of Jeremy Allaire's Brightcove. And we also see it with the new generation of wireless-mobility technologists and entrepreneurs with similar ideas as five+ years ago, but today with the great advantage of “the right time”… The time for wireless/mobility opportunities truly begin now – here finally are the advanced handsets, and the advanced networks, and the people using them!
ceo