Steve Jobs looks at the small device in front of him. This small device can play music, and he got to admit that the product development engineers at Aiwa are genius.
But Steve Jobs noticed some flaws in the MP3 players. For example, the LCD screen is too small, and can only display two rows of lyrics, and there are no internal batteries. The power consumption is quite high, and there are too many buttons, making the device looks complicated, etc.
If Steve Jobs were to design this MP3 player, he would make the screen bigger, smaller about the size of half a palm, and flatter. The controls will be in a circle, and everything else will be simplified. He will also increase the storage, and the player must be very light.
Steve Jobs called his men over and told them his ideas.
Apple is also going to manufacture its own MP3 players. Still, they will not name it as an MP3 player, as they will be seen as copying others. Steve Jobs wants everyone to know this is Apple’s product when they hear the product’s name. Yes, this music player can be called iPod, just like the way we call our PCs, iMac.
If they were to increase the internal storage, then it’s not worth using flash drive technologies. The cost will be too high, and they should use hard disks for storage, and it will increase the storage size several times. They can also sell it at higher prices, making more profits.
Also, the iPod can be used as a portable hard drive, and it should be more popular.
Currently, there is a high demand for a portable storage device in the market, and the traditional floppy disks are slowly being obsoleted. Almost all PCs manufacturers in the market stopped including floppy drives in their PCs. They had switched to optic drives like DVD.
This DVD optic drive is mainly according to Wind and Rain – Philips standards, as most manufacturers had gotten the paten authorizations from these two companies. Among both companies, Wind and Rain Electronics has got more patents.
So, CDs had become the mainstream portable data storage tool now, and basically, no one uses floppy disks anymore. But there is a flaw with using CDs, which is CDs are easily scratched.
CDs are more fragile than floppy disks, and once the CDs are damaged, the data cannot be retrieved. Although the technology had been improved, there are still data losses when the CDs are damaged.
Thus, the demand for portable data storage tools increased. A portable hard disk becomes popular. All it needs is a USB cable to connect to a PC, and the user can retrieve the data inside the hard disk.
But portable hard disk is extremely fragile. If it dropped or the power supply is cut off halfway when a user is saving his data halfway, all the data might be corrupted. Sometimes, a portable hard disk is damaged and cannot be used again after a light knock on it.
Around this period, flash drive technology comes into the picture. Flash drive is durable and is much cheaper than a portable hard disk. Of course, the storage space in the flash drive is much smaller.
At this time, a new portable data storage product, USB drive, appeared in the market. This thumb-sized device is small and compact, and it’s convenient for users to bring it along with them.
But the USB drive’s storage is only 128 MB and 256 MB. Because of the small storage size, not many people are willing to buy it. But when the consumers noticed Aiwa’s MP3 player is also using flash drive technology, and the storage is increased to 512 MB, they started to notice the USB drive.
Many companies in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the US, etc. started researching and developing similar products. All of them want to increase the storage and let this USB drive replace all other portable data storage devices.
As the number of PC users increases, more companies become computerized and start storing their documents and records electronically. With a smaller portable data storage device it will make their work easier.
CDs can also do the job, but CDs can only be written once, and portable hard disks are too expensive. This USB drive is the most suitable device.
Apple had wanted to develop this technology but released this technology had been patented by a company called Aiwa Electronics.
If Apple were to continue to research into USB drives, they had to pay Aiwa Electronics patent fees. They sent their men to speak to Aiwa, but the outcome is not satisfactory.
Aiwa Electronics is demanding 20 million USD for lifetime authorization. This is daylight robbery, as the development fees for this technology might not even cost 2 million USD.
Many other companies had also developed this technology successfully but realized it was already registered. Most of them cannot afford to pay for the patent fees and gave up.
Some companies insisted their technology is different from Aiwa Electronics’ patent. For example, Toshiba invented memory card technology, SanDisk invented the CF cards, Sony invented the memory stick, etc. Sony also introduced a flash drive, which is similar to the USB drive. After all, the name USB drive had been registered.
At first, some companies felt flash drives are useless, as the production cost is high, and the technology is complicated. Even when the USB drive is launched into the market, many consumers felt this product will disappear after a while.
But as MP3 players gained popularity with the consumers, these companies realized how useful this technology is.
The smaller companies are unable to go around the USB drive patents and had the same idea as Apple. They will develop an MP3 player using a hard disk as internal storage. They will focus on bigger storage space as the selling point of their products.
Around the same time, Feng Yu ordered Aiwa to stop researching on hard disk MP3 players and focus on flash drive MP3 players. After all, Aiwa Electronics had successfully developed the 1 GB USB drive, and they should use it on their MP3 players. At the same time, the MP3 player’s screen must be bigger. Feng Yu even get Wind and Rain Design to draw out the iPod from his previous life and gave it to Heitaro Nakajima.
The idea of controlling the MP3 player with one hand is a selling point for the iPod. Even when the iPod was expensive and had poor music quality when newly launched, many people still bought it. iPod is one of Apple’s successful products and brought high profits for the company.
Feng Yu also asked Aiwa to develop the recording technology. This technology will allow users to convert the songs from CDs into MP3 with a cable. This will help those people who are lazy to download MP3 music from their PCs.
But this feature made Heitaro Nakajima frowned. If they introduced this feature, they would be sued by the Recording Industry Association of America again. The Recording Industry Association of America will insist this is an infringement of their copyrights.
But who cares about the Recording Industry Association of America. This is only an added function, and it’s up to the user to use it. Aiwa can choose to ignore it. The consumers had bought original CDs, and why can’t they convert them into MP3 format? As long as the user is not sharing these songs, it’s not considered an infringement of copyrights.
When the development of MP3 players reached a certain stage, the next trend will be MP4. At that time, the color screen technology should be matured, and Aiwa will continue to lead the industry with their technologies.
“Often imitated, but NEVER exceeded!”
Translator’s notes:
Memory card
