If you sell a device that relies on an external service to function, then you are no longer in the hardware business, you are in the services business, and should sell the service as such.
Likewise, if you are a consumer and buying a physical device that needs an upstream service, you dont really own, or really even need to own the device. What you really want is the value the device brings, without any of the headaches that go along with devices becoming obsolete.
Logitech is so used to selling hardware products that they didn't realize that they became a service provider as soon as their Harmony Link required connectivity. They should not be marketing or selling devices, despite their history of being a physical product vendor.
If users had purchased a "Harmony Link" service agreement, and Logitech was responsible for keeping their users devices up to date and functioning with their service, then nobody would complain.
Cable companies figured this out a long time ago. When was the last time anyone had to care about cable modem or set top boxes being deprecated? The cable companies have always sold the service, and the hardware was either rentable, or, sometimes, provided by the consumer, but always with the understanding that the hardware wasnt why people bought cable.
I've avoided any of these connected home hardware specifically because the manufacturers try and push ownership to the consumers. As soon as its the service providers responsibility to ensure the devices are secure and work with their service, I'll sign right up.
This reminds me of the "Keurig model" of hardware sales [1]. As a hardware guy myself, it's easy to focus on the physical product instead of the real reason anyone would buy it.
I hate this model. I'm old fashioned, in that anything I rely on day to day, I want to own. My tools, my games, my pots and pans. Every service license you agree to adds another layer of external control to your life.
Might as well make it 20 years. For something like a remote control you can fit 100k users on a server, and a little bit of money per device can go an extremely long way. Extra large ec2 servers (which you can easily do better than on cost) are about a thousand dollars a year, and you only need a few hours of sysadmin work per month across the entire fleet.
And you can cut servers as people end up using devices less on their own.
Having a physical remote isn't the value proposition. Being able to remotely control a wide variety of aspects of my home is the service I would pay for. The hardware that accomplishes that is irrelevant.
If you charge enough, and have enough year-over-year device turnover, your service—or at least its basic tier—can be subsidized by device purchases. Like Apple's iCloud.
Likewise, if you are a consumer and buying a physical device that needs an upstream service, you dont really own, or really even need to own the device. What you really want is the value the device brings, without any of the headaches that go along with devices becoming obsolete.
Logitech is so used to selling hardware products that they didn't realize that they became a service provider as soon as their Harmony Link required connectivity. They should not be marketing or selling devices, despite their history of being a physical product vendor. If users had purchased a "Harmony Link" service agreement, and Logitech was responsible for keeping their users devices up to date and functioning with their service, then nobody would complain.
Cable companies figured this out a long time ago. When was the last time anyone had to care about cable modem or set top boxes being deprecated? The cable companies have always sold the service, and the hardware was either rentable, or, sometimes, provided by the consumer, but always with the understanding that the hardware wasnt why people bought cable.
I've avoided any of these connected home hardware specifically because the manufacturers try and push ownership to the consumers. As soon as its the service providers responsibility to ensure the devices are secure and work with their service, I'll sign right up.