Telecom New Zealand’s Ferrit has been closed down for the most part.
This follows a significant and long advertising campaign to build up the reputation of the online store.
Companies should stick to what they do best. In this case Telecom should have put the money towards NZ’s dismal internet services.
Large companies who try to do something outside their business model, ie Telecom trying to do something fun and “entrepreneurial” should not bother. If the project doesn’t match their business, it’s going to be difficult to make it successful.
I was recently on the eettf.net blog when I found this video. When a large corporation such as Microsoft tries to appeal to the masses, this is the outcome:
I thought this was a joke, but it is actually real:
This is, regrettably the outcome of a company who is good at one thing, trying to compete with companies who are good at similar things, but have a different market audience.
I assume this is something they thought could compete with easy to use software from companies such as Apple.
I am tempted to say, this is terrible. It is a ridiculous idea. But what if Apple were to make something similar, first, hype it up and target it differently to their customers, with say a tie in to itunes and the ipod? It could work. But that’s because they would make it for their target audience. I think the problem here is that Microsoft is targetting someone else’s target market. They need to establish a presence in that target market first, which they haven’t done.
Microsoft is really good at Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. They should really stick to that, improving it so it works well and is more useful. And perhaps create software you can plug in to it, which is useful.
