OK, I have a question. Actually it’s not my question, it’s from Sandy in Sydney. He needs to borrow our brains.
“Any shining examples you can think of of companies that are making a successful transition from ‘analogue’ to digital delivery”.
My answer is nope. I can’t think of anything at all. Nothing in music, nothing in publishing, nothing in photography (Getty images?). Not really.
How about the wisdom of crowds on this one?
Not exactly sure what the question means. Of course there are lots of good examples of augmenting delivery with digital: ABC’s iView, BBC Player, the new Classics app (Penguin or Amazon?). Maybe the question is posed from the perspective of a content creator? The above examples are free – and free things are easier to sell!
For paid content, in my field, science, printed journals are essentially extinct. There is only digital due to speed, searchability and cost.
Do you mean moving from the physical to the digital?
Agree with Scott – the iPlayer is probably a shining light of how to go from one medium to another. However it doesn’t make any money (or need to), so it’s a bit of an artificial market.
How about Microsoft? Once upon a time you had lots of 3.5″ disks for an Operating System or application, then you had lots of 3.5″ disks. Then lots of CD, DVDs, etc. Then you just downloaded the application from the Internet. And now you just rent the service over the Internet using Office 365.
The supermarkets have done well, although one could argue that online shopping is similar to [paper] catalogue shopping.
I think the context is shops and to some extent moving physical items.