Making Akimbo a Profitable Service/Platform
Akimbo Systems: Your wish is on demand | With the Akimbo Reviews and price cuts starting to come, what does Akimbo really need to do in order to make their platform and service profitable and get it out to everyone?
First: Price is always a key to anything like this. $229.99 for the box and $9.99 a month for the service is way too much. No one is going to replace their cable or satellite service with Akimbo and they know this. They have some good content coming down, mainstream even. However, that extra box and extra remote isn’t going to pursued people who most likely already paying for some of the same content. Note: Until June 30th it's $99 for the Akimbo Player and $169.99 for a lifetime subscription
Second: They must offer different choices for delivery around the home. I have read before that a Media Center plug-in should be coming, and that’s going to be key to getting people to start talking about it. Not only would I be able to access the content on my PC, but it should be able to go over Extenders too! The video format used is Windows Media Video, and I would guess that it fits what current Media Center Extenders can handle. Forget buying another box, people will be more willing to try it out if they already have the hardware to get the content moved throughout their home. $169.99 for a lifetime subscription doesn’t seem that bad when I can move it around the house to Extenders that I might already have. And if I don’t already have one they offer more functionally then the Akimbo Player box.
Third: Content, content, content. Akimbo has a problem here. 95% of the people who would consider using this service already have cable or satellite TV. You are going to have to offer something that we can’t get from that. While Akimbo has content from big name providers (A&E, Cartoon Network, BBC, CNN, the History Channel, National Geographic, and Turner Classic Movies), chances are the people who would look at using Akimbo already get these channels with cable or satellite TV and a good percent of those have a DVR/PVR too! Paying an additional $9.99 for the same stuff isn’t going to happen.
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Offer a service to allow people to upload there own content into the system. Build a community around it. Video blogs, home movies, stupid videos, whatever. Let people add there own content, categorize it, and then build a web interface to let people interact with each other.
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On the same front, build a web community were users can discuss upcoming content and shows.
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Pre-air content. Somehow find out how to partner with a big content provider, and allow content to be distributed first to the Akimbo Player! If people can really “build a library of video that fits our interests to watch on our own schedule” then this has to happen. Could Akimbo start the breaking of the network schedule?
