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But the biggest problem, according to futurist Saffo, is that TiVo's DVR technology is a feature and not a product.

"In the years to come, TiVo will become a button on some future product, like spell checker did for Word," Saffo said.

"Five tech firms at a crossroads"

There's an interesting comparison to "becoming a feature" in the same article about Vonage:

To its credit, Vonage has been partnering with retailer and product manufacturers, such as Linksys and Netgear, to quickly grow its subscriber numbers, Arnold said. These alliances should help Vonage lower the cost of acquiring customers, a key factor in how fast it uses up its cash.

That is VoIP has the potential to become a feature, so to hedge it's bets Vonage can (is?) embrace this possibility by being the one who provides this feature.

In general, that seems like a possible good strategy when your tech is in danger of being featurized/commoditized: instead of trying compete only as the complete system, compete as the best provider of whatever technology you excel at. Not to the end user, but to other companies who sell to end-users.

Of course, that's not going to always work, and splitting up your attention like that has the danger of confusing end-users and stealing away your energy from focusing on selling as a complete system.

The rest of the article is interesting too: in addition to TiVo and Vonage, it has mini-profiles of Netflix, PalmSource, and the Blackberry people, Research In Motion.