TiVo's CEO is stepping down but remains as Chariman. Thomas Hawk says it's about time and enumerates his failings (included here in the extended entry). I wish TiVo well but have my doubts.
UPDATE: More from the New York Times.
Misdeeds1. It would have been simple to build a multi tuner system much earlier in the process. A single tuner standalone box is unacceptable these days.
2. The DirecTV HDTV box had excellent sales. TiVo should have pursued an HDTV strategy for a standalone box much earlier.
3. Instead of doing either of the above the company spent the last year working on TiVo to Go which only works with less than 50% of their customers.
4. They should have sold their brand name recognition to another company while the stock was still up rather than let the vultures pick it up in bankruptcy court.
5. They should have negotiated better with the content providers and brought more original content to the TiVo platform.
6. They should have been more open and transparent with their customers about the state of their pipeline and allowed their customers to better evangelize their products.
7. They were a weak negotiator with DirecTV when they had a much stronger hand. They took too little and gave too many concessions in terms of giving up control over the hardware (disabling USB ports, HMO, etc.).
8. The whole ads over ad skipping technology was a huge PR blunder that will not provide any type of significant revenue to the firm in time to work.
Amongst other things.
