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This week Amazon released the Echo Show and it is a fascinating product basically it builds on the Echo by adding video capability.  This reminds me a bit of when Microsoft brought out the Zune and ran it against the Apple iPod a decade ago but with a very different dynamic. Back then Apple dominated the market and could argue compellingly that video was stupid largely because you couldn’t then get the rights to it so Zune’s video advantage was muted by the fact it was way too difficult to get video onto the device.  Timing and content availability are the big differentiators.

Let’s revisit iPod vs. Zune

The Zune Failure vs. The iPod

One of the sad things about Microsoft Zune was that they tried to create another Xbox like success, they knew what they needed to do, but then Microsoft treated that list of must do things like it was multiple choice.  For instance, because the iPod was dominant they knew they had to be able to move playlists seamlessly between the two platforms but didn’t execute and their big competitive advantage, the ability to share music, only worked if both parties had Zunes and that would have meant a more aggressive seeding program than Apple had and they didn’t execute that either.   As noted above Microsoft’s Zune did play video but ripping DVDs was far more difficult than ripping CDs and the movie industry fought this practice far more aggressively than the record companies did so this “feature” was largely unused.

So, the problems were that Microsoft was the challenger not the leader, knew what they needed to do but didn’t do it, had a key advantage that needed a scale they couldn’t achieve out of the gate, and one of their biggest features, video, was nearly impossible to get to work.

Echo Show vs. HomePod

Unlike the Microsoft Zune facing a massively more successful iPod, the Echo Show faces a product, the HomePod, that doesn’t even exist in market yet.  The Amazon Echo is by far the dominant product in the segment and Amazon actually has a line which includes both an entry level product (The Dot), and a portable product (The Tap) along with the original Echo.  While iTunes remains very popular even Apple users often have multiple music services that Amazon’s offerings currently support making it hard to migrate in either direction between the two products which hurts Apple more because, in this instance, they are the challenging vendor.

Like the Zune the Echo Show does video while the Apple HomePod does not, however streaming and downloadable video content is far more accessible and the Echo Show even supports video conferencing and room to room intercom which the HomePod does not.