The relationship between companies, the media and politics

I always wondered why car makers didn't make changes to their products after the media reviewed and presented their critiques. What more would a company want than free consumer testing? Surely it would cost an insignificant amount, as a lot of the testing and data would already be present and tweaking production lines in this day and age is no hard task.

The same with electronics products. It beggars belief that Apple could innovate with the iPhone in design and a cute interface (although currently limited in functionality) and NOT ONE other manufacturer took the baton and tried to get one up on them. Take this article from a well respected online magazine: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8492 . It gives a very well reasoned solution to creating an iPhone beater.

With my plans for the cinema, my mind went into orderdrive. The thoughts were something along the lines of:

1. Bring in major film production partner (like Universal) which is part of a conglomerate media company
2. Make a huge success of rebranding Upper Regent Street, attracting high profile "Studio Stores", interactive product stores (like Apple have done with the Apple Store) and bring some much needed vibrancy to London.
3. Pitch to the film production partner's music label to form an alliance with Microsoft.
4. In that alliance, we build the perfect media player, distribution service and market it with the kind of panache that is sorely lacking from anyone other than Apple. (Media player would be very open, web browser would fully support ALL technologies - HTF did Apple screw up lack of Flash support on the iPhone and iPod Touch!!, and the web based music hub would be VERY open, offering multiple formats)
5. Destroy Apple's market share, because let's face it, the products are very heavily flawed when you get past the great aesthetics (think video or non-itune content).

And from there, the sky is the limit in terms of cross-selling to increase revenue streams and profit margins, as well as being able to tap into a wealth of consumer data that would point the way forward.

Well, that's what I would like to do, anyway.