\n<\/p>\n
Faber: The other day, in Ireland, in our innovation center there, one of our team members showed me a forever mouse with the comparison to a watch. This is a nice watch, not a super expensive watch, but I\u2019m not planning to throw that watch away ever. So why would I be throwing my mouse or my keyboard away if it\u2019s a fantastic-quality, well-designed, software-enabled mouse. The forever mouse is one of the things that we\u2019d like to get to.<\/p>\n
Patel: What made the mouse a forever mouse?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a little heavier, it had great software and services that you\u2019d constantly update, and it was beautiful. So I don\u2019t think we\u2019re necessarily super far away from that.<\/p>\n But, again, I just come back to the cost. You sell me the mouse once. Maybe I\u2019ll pay 200 bucks for it.<\/strong><\/p>\n The business model obviously is the challenge there. So then software is even more important when you think about it. Can you come up with a service model? In our video conferencing business, that is now a very important part of the model, the services, and it\u2019s critical for corporate customers.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s come to that in a second because that makes sense to me. You sell managed services to enterprises. You price support contracts for cameras and whatever. That\u2019s an ongoing need businesses have. I\u2019m still stuck on, \u201cYou\u2019re going to sell me a mouse once and it\u2019s going to have ongoing software updates forever.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Imagine it\u2019s like your Rolex. You\u2019re going to really love that.<\/p>\n But Rolex has to employ software engineers to ship me over-the-air updates forever.<\/strong><\/p>\n But the artifact is like your Rolex, and then given that we know the technology that we attach to changes, it\u2019s not going to be like your Rolex in that it doesn\u2019t have to ever change. Our stuff will have to change, but does the hardware have to change? I\u2019m not so sure. We\u2019ll have to obviously fix it and figure out what that business model is. We\u2019re not at the forever mouse today, but I\u2019m intrigued by the thought.<\/p>\n It certainly will help with sustainability. There are two ways people have traditionally proposed monetizing hardware over time. It\u2019s subscription fees and it\u2019s advertising. Is there a third way that I don\u2019t know about that you\u2019re thinking of?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. The third way is the traditional model of \u201cwe innovate and we have you upgrade.\u201d That\u2019s the current model. And we\u2019re pretty damn good at that model because we have pretty damn good innovators around the company who do come up with fabulous products.\u00a0<\/p>\n That is definitely the model today. It\u2019s not a bad model at all, especially since we\u2019re continuing to design for more sustainable products. We\u2019re continuing to recycle and refurbish products. All of that is good. But that said, I am intrigued by a forever mouse or forever video conferencing solution that you just update with software and create a business model around that.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse?<\/strong><\/p>\n Possibly.<\/p>\n And that would be the forever mouse?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.<\/p>\n So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again, which is not unlike our video conferencing services today.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a mouse.<\/strong><\/p>\n But it\u2019s a mouse, yeah.<\/p>\n