It's hard to believe that TiVo has been with us for 11-years, and even harder to understand how it's managed to hang around all that time with only three profitable quarters. TiVo closed out its second profitable quarter in a row on July 31st, but don't call off that
deathwatch just yet -- the company followed up the good news with a gloomy Q3 forecast to the tune of a $7M - $9M net loss, and revenue below expectations. Mounting competition from cable and satellite operator is eating into the DVR pie, and getting things up and running with
Comcast has been painfully slow. For TiVo's sake, we hope that things with
Cox and Australia's
Seven go a whole lot better, because cutting marketing costs to profitability in the competitive DVR market doesn't sound like a viable long-term strategy to us.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kcmurphy88 @ Aug 28th 2008 12:10PM
As long as TiVo charges $18/month for each TiVo you have, they have NO HOPE of significant market penetration. Their best expansion was when DirecTV's HD TiVos cost $5/household regardless of how many TIVos you had. They should charge more for the hardware and much much less for the subscription.
As a TiVo shareholder, I find their management exasperating. Seldom dou you find a company with all kinds of better mousetraps and no customers. They couldn't sell mittens to Eskimos.
coyotej @ Aug 28th 2008 2:43PM
Actually it's WAY less than $18/mo, I believe the highest is $12.95 if you go month-to-month, and as low as $8.31/mo if you pay at least a year ahead. And then there's lifetime options if you're into that. There's also a multi-TiVo discount that has a lower "max cost" but I don't recall how much that is.
I get the sense that the slow Comcast-rollout is probably in large part on Comcast.
Mike Peluso @ Aug 28th 2008 1:01PM
TiVo is in a rock and a hard place. The long term strategy for them is to try and maximize revenue with ad's and online offerings such as pay per view and eliminate the monthly fee all together. It's going to take deeper pockets and a broader product portfolio to make that happen. Someone like Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google needs to purchase TiVo and take it to the next level.
Abouna @ Aug 28th 2008 1:21PM
It wouldn't hurt a bit if they'd roll out the Amazon HD Unbox stuff. Cripes.
Larry S @ Aug 28th 2008 3:46PM
As someone who would never trade his two TiVos for the Cableco supplied "DVR", TiVo blew it a long time ago when the failed to replicate their original Direct TV model with the cable companies - i.e. licensing it's software to them and/or the SciAtl/Motorola cable box manufacturers.
huddleson1 @ Aug 28th 2008 3:55PM
This company will not last much longer if they don't drastically change their strategy. They have to begin integrating their technology with pay-TV companies like Comcast, Dish Network, and Direct TV. Those people who are unwilling to pay for cable will not likely pay a monthly fee for electronic programing guide data for their DVR.
I have Dish Network, and I'm certain that many other subscribers like me would be happy to have a Dish Network DVR with integrated Tivo technology, but there's no way I would every waste my time setting up a Tivo box to record from a non-DVR Dish Network Box.
...Also, if they believe themselves to be one of the best STB companies, why didn't they produce a stripped down digital transition box with no DVR that all of these OTA people could buy with a coupon. That was a huge opportunity to increase their customer base.