Recipe for a successful MID market

So what’s a MID company to do? Here’s my advice:

1) First, admit that if the iPhone were technically a MID, it would be crushing all the competition. Yes, acceptance is the first step. Denial is not going to work here. Now once you admit that the iPhone is a good MID, you need to realize the importance of building quality into the hardware. That means: The device better be light. The touch digitizer need to work well. People expect multi-touch (or at least two-point touch) or at least good touch slide actions. ATM-quality touch isn’t going to make it. Accept this as a fact. Likewise, add sensors that make sense for the device. If you want it to work as a gaming device it’ll need an accelerometer. And if you want it to work as a companion device it needs good communication links. I’d also add that a very good camera and lens are necessary elements of a great MID.

2) So with good hardware, the next important thing is a good OS. Vista is OK, but on/off better be very sleep biased rather than booting from a standstill. I also think a custom shell is really needed, but since Microsoft is unlikely to do that, maybe, just maybe you can convince Intel to work with Microsoft to do the work. A standalone application is marginally OK, but that’s not really what you want.

3) The third most important thing is a great browser–and unlike the iPhone’s flash-less browser, this thing needs to be complete. It needs to run Flash, Silverlight, and potentially the other browser plugin platforms. What makes a great small device browser? My suggestion: You don’t need to worry about rewriting the browser for now; instead I’d start by making the browser great for reading.

4) Killer built in apps. You’ll need the basics, such as stocks and news and maps, however take it to the next step and create awesome live radar weather maps. Show the iPhone how it’s done.

5) Get devices out to community developers and encourage them by providing financial rewards for good apps or set bounties for desired apps. A large market will attract the developers, but short of that you’re going to need to engage developers–a lot. I’d start by getting devices into their hands. Intel will probably have to lead this effort. My suggestion: Start an ISV program and for those that join and commit to releasing an app, they get a MID for development purposes.

6) Get people online using MIDs. Look at what the top 15-20% of what bloggers and the like do–and then tune the MIDs for them in some compelling way. For instance, make MIDs great for broadcasting on UStream or Qik.

Not until after you’ve done all these basic steps is it even worthwhile to start a traditional PR campaign for MIDs. Without the groundwork skepticism is going to grow and people are going to slice and dice your products–no matter how good they are. Don’t forget, you’re up against one of the leading brands right now: Apple.

Anyway, these are my top 6 suggestions for a successful MID effort. Anyone else have any other suggestions?