The Next Big Thing … Not! Sony's eMarker Shows Why Research and Common Sense 
Are An Integral Part of Marketing    
 
  
by Leo Jakobson

New Coke. Zima alcoholic beverage. The XFL. Admittedly, the Sony eMarker 
isn't really in this league in the history of dumb ideas by otherwise 
intelligent and successful companies, but that's only because the $20 
gadget isn't going to have a noticeable effect on the Japanese electronics 
giant's bottom line. In fact, I suspect it'll fade away long before the 
average person has ever heard of it.

There is a certain value in discussing the eMarker despite that, because 
the rubberized key chain represents something that will become a bigger 
and bigger part of the wireless community's life over the next few years--an 
initially interesting, technologically sound wireless toy that will only be 
purchased on a goofy impulse and used for a few days, or perhaps weeks, 
before being relegated to the back of the junk drawer forever.

The eMarker is a two-inch, rubber-coated plastic ovoid with a thumbnail-size 
digital screen and a covered USB port. It's designed to record songs you hear 
playing on the radio that you like but don't know the name of. When you hear 
one, you press the button and the eMarker takes a time stamp (memory is 
limited to 10 songs). Later, when attached to your PC and transmitted to 
the eMarker.com website, you learn the title and artist, and receive a 
clip of the tune. 

The tracking is done on a page you create at the eMarker.com website, which 
compiles the playlists of 1,250 stations nationwide. You register three 
stations, including your favorite. When you upload, eMarker takes you to 
your favorite station and plays a clip of the tune being broadcast when 
you hit the eMarker button. If that isn't it, you switch to the next two 
stations. Once you've found the tune, links connect you to online merchants 
selling that CD. 

Sony is aiming at the youth market, hoping that the fact that DJs tend not 
to identify songs these days will spawn a web of cross-marketing deals and 
percentages of sales. But how many kids are really going to continue to 
track songs? Anyone fanatical enough about music to buy and carry the eMarker 
probably knows what songs are being played-and that the really cool music 
doesn't get played on America's corporation-dominated, generic radio stations.

Now, I'll give you that the inherent technology is simple. But it puts the 
cart before the horse: specifically, it puts the technological ability to 
do something before the market demand. The flip side of that argument is 
that small wireless consumer devices will inevitably run into this problem: 
except for a few items that replicate current wired devices that people carry 
- such as headphones - all wireless gadgets are breaking new territory. Thus, 
demand will have to be manufactured via marketing. 

This will happen more and more as wireless technologies, such as the Bluetooth 
short-range standard, come into their own. Indeed, there's probably an argument 
to be made that an intelligent consumer electronics company will put out many 
wireless gadgets in hopes of a few hits. Sony's Walkman was a heck of a gamble 
way in 1979. Battery technology also is improving rapidly and dramatically, 
holding out the real possibility that within a year or two, personal electronics 
will have power to last weeks or months, instead of hours or minutes. 

A couple of good ideas are already out there. German manufacturer Microsport 
came up with a dandy inline skate speedometer that uses a mini-computer in an 
inline skate wheel to measure speed and distance, connecting it wirelessly to 
a digital watch/readout. Considering how popular similar, hard-wired devices 
are with bicyclists, Microsport seems likely to have a hit on its hands, 
assuming it pours in enough marketing to let the legion of enthusiasts know 
their product exists. 

The coming wave of wireless gadgets will make many cool ideas technologically 
feasible. But as investors learned during the dot-com bubble, just because you 
can build a product doesn't mean you should. Let's have some market research 
before we plunk down the money here, people.



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