Biggest Winner: Apple and the Jesus Phone
You know your product’s hit a nerve when people pair it up with the savior of the world. Apple CEO Steve Jobs induced a Web-and-media-wide paroxysm by introducing the iPhone last January, which lasted until the mob turned on him over steep price cuts in advance of the holiday season. Pair that with a wildly successful ad campaign, surging stock prices, and increasing comparisons to Microsoft (gasp!), and you’ve got an all around winner.
Biggest Losers: Apple TV, Kevin Martin, Second Life, and the RIAA
Launch of Apple TV, which promised to link Web content to television sets, was overshadowed by the aforementioned Jesus phone. Not that it mattered much; once bloggers got around to it, they were less than enthused.
Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin proved himself to be such a telco-industry flunkie in regard to Net Neutrality, cable regulation, 700 MHz auction rules, and spectrum use that his year ends with threats of a Congressional investigation for abuse of power. Well done, Kevin. Or at least you will be when the grilling’s finished.
Even though Second Life lit up 2006 with the possibilities and issues virtual worlds presented to marketers and lawyers, and even influenced philosophies regarding virtual goods and currencies in 2007, those accumulated Linden dollars may soon be doing as poorly as the real dollar, or worse. Recent reports show Second Life has become a bit of a ghost town.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) bullied, fought, and sued its way to infamous villainy in both 2006 and 2007 by targeting not just file-sharing networks but also file-sharers themselves. But 2007 marked the year the recording industry began to walk away from DRM (digital rights management). EMI, Universal, and Warner Music Group all opened their hearts to DRM-free digital format, leaving only Sony BMG to fight the losing battle.
