Back in 2019, I wrote about how the smartphone seems to have become a swiss army knife equivalent that is making obsolete so many products!
A list:
Alarm clock
Note pad
Calendar
Watch
Portable music player/radio
Address book
Wallet
Photo album
Pagers
Dictionary
Stopwatch
Camera
GPS device
Audio recorder
Scanner
There’s already a portable audio player on the list, but would you add a ‘car audio player’ to this list?
If you already connect your phone via Bluetooth to your car audio player and play whatever you want (music, podcasts, or audiobooks, like me) you’d concur.
But here is Spotify making its hardware debut, with a standalone car audio player!! It’s called ‘Car Thing’ (full marks for the name!)
Spotify’s first hardware product is a dedicated car audio player with a 4-inch screen that you can attach to the a/c vent.
But… and this is a BIG but… the device connects to your phone via Bluetooth to play Spotify – it doesn’t have internet access on its own!
So the most obvious question for anyone who has a car and a smartphone would be… “Why would I need this device when I already have a smartphone that can perform the same function inside the car?”.
I had that question too, but it looks like Spotify is aiming at the fairly-substantial older-car owners who do not have Bluetooth connectivity in the car. I do not fit that target audience (though I did have a 2007 Honda City that fits the bill, I sold it last year. But I do understand the use-case because of that car).
And then the hardware design itself! It has a big rotary dial, emulating older generation car audio tuners! Plus, it works with your voice (which, these days, most phones do too, of course). But overall, my initial befuddlement about Spotify trying to create a product where a need doesn’t even exist was toned down the more I thought about it.
To be sure, I’m still not the target audience for this product at all. But, increasingly, I think a stand-alone product that does one thing really, really well (which the smartphone does as one of the many tasks) may actually be an interesting idea.
Even though it is not a direct comparison or example, the Kindle is perhaps a reasonably good example. It was launched 3 years before the iPad, but an iPad could be a great ebook reader too. But the fact that the Amazon Kindle is a standalone ebook reader makes it truly clutter-free and distraction-free, like how a book should be. Plus, because it strips down every indulgent extra a tablet loads in, the battery lasts much, much longer, making it function extraordinarily well as an ebook.
Many smartwatches pair with the smartphone and behave much like the Spotify car audio player – using the phone’s connectivity to perform watch-led functions at your wrist that do not require a larger screen. Some of the newer smartwatches have gone a step further – including the facility to add a SIM card so that it has its own connectivity and does not need the smartphone to function.
For that matter, virtual assistants at our homes need not be standalone devices either – our smartphones, that is always with us, could easily double up as virtual assistants even at our homes since they connect the same home wifi too and have in-built virtual assistants anyway. But we have assorted companies competing for the home-based virtual assistant product space that also works as the gateway to home automation.
Similarly, small, weightless earbuds that can store content, or connect to a smartwatch that has internet connectivity to play audio content could be more useful to joggers and runners than the need to carry a fairly bulky (from a runner’s perspective) smartphone (and tie it to the arm via a band).
It may be too early to call this, but is there a possibility that we could see use-cases being unbundled/extracted from the smartphone after a decade of being bundled into the smartphone? The need has to have a large enough audience, and this Spotify car audio player perhaps does not entirely fit into the scheme since most newer cars come with very snazzy car audio systems with much larger screens and more apps to play content from.
And to be fair, many standalone products that are also part of a smartphone continue to exist (though I’m not sure about their sales after the smartphone version came into existence).
Cameras continue to be sold, though cheaper, point-and-shoot cameras are probably on the wane and only professional cameras are doing well given the niche audience. Scanners are still being sold, for professional use. Torches, audio recorder, stopwatch? Professional use.
This Spotify car audio player breaks the mold in interesting ways that it is not meant for professional use, does one thing really well (or at least promises to), and you don’t need to fidget with your phone (assuming you are the target audience with an older car). Interestingly, when Spotify introduced this product as a test in 2019, they mentioned that they may even consider doing more ‘things’, like ‘Voice Thing’ and ‘Home Thing’ (a stand-alone virtual assistant that plays only Spotify?)!
I wonder what more services have a substantial audience that could help them be unbundled from what the world bundled into the phone and launched as standalone products. Take a look at the apps on your phone and imagine them as standalone hardware products!
Can you foresee a standalone Netflix player? Or a Disney+ player? Sounds impossible? Spotify found a viable gap in terms of use-case – inside cars (as against an iPod-like standalone portable audio player). What is the equivalent of the ‘inside cars’ insight for a Netflix or a Disney+ to consider a standalone player? Larger screen, easier to hold, plays only videos and battery lasts much longer than phones/tablets?
Or consider the many mobile payment systems. Can they be extracted into a standalone electronic wallet product where you can store a few credit cards, debit cards, add digital money and use that with a fingerprint reader to pay effortlessly and without fidgeting with your phone? I’m just thinking aloud – someone at Spotify did go beyond, ‘No way!!’ uttered to the person who first offered the car audio player idea, remember 🙂