Akimbo Is Dead, Gone, And Now We Move On

May 24 at 3:03pm by

As the technorati have made ever so clear in the last couple of days, Akimbo, a video delivery company that started off with a set-top box focus and later also experimented with things PC-specific, is now very much expired, as first revealed by Matt Marshall of VentureBeat, having closed the doors on its multi-million-dollar venture (47 large, if you’re talking total investments start to finish).

Quite honestly, I kind of expected this to happen.

I wouldn’t say it was guaranteed to fail. It would be silly to say so. It had a shot. The biggest one being time. A lot of hours, weeks, and months to get its brand where it needed to be. A good amount of starter cash and backup fuel didn’t hurt its chances, either.

But ever since I first heard of the company, back when it was still a relative unknown (though it arguably never got out from under the shadow of obscurity), it never seemed to have it right. Execution was just…off. Concept was nice. As are those presented by competitors. But perhaps things, when all was said and done, just didn’t click as they should have. Which happens. Most startups are destined to fail. But now, given Akimbo’s departure from the market, a question has come to mind. What is to come of those that have proven more fortunate? Does the flop of this one company portend similar closures? Will demand sustain this market of largely experimental efforts, be it those optioned by Apple or Amazon? Or will consumers just not bite, even given the choice?

There’s no question we’re currently observing the earliest stage of IPTV, be it in the form of streaming content or permanent downloads of television programming and film. Still, I have continually held a rather optimistic view on things to come in the next year or two or three. My sense has been for the past several months that we’re nearing the tipping point. Perhaps it will be reached before the close of this decade. Perhaps it will come in years thereafter.

Sure, it’s agonizing to think that it’ll be four years or more before this IPTV dream is truly realized by enough consumers (those based in the US, anyway) to be something that studios could subsist on for 50% or more of annual revenue. But in big business - and media delivery is no doubt big business - things do move slow. Few things catch on like wildfire. Whether it’s Hulu or the new Roku, streaming video from Netflix’s servers, or TiVo with its arrangement with Amazon, growth will continue to be less than phenomenal. Old habits die hard. No getting around that fact.

—
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

The PC Goes All Akimbo
Akimbo Raises More Capital for its Video Distribution Business
Mark Cuban To Appear on Dancing With the Stars?
Respectance Gets $1.5 Million, Posthumously
Brain Dead Republicans & Zombie Democrats Duke it Out on JibJab
MeeVee Adds Feeds from Several Major Networks
Update to Tumblr Finally On the Way