“Both Sony and Microsoft are hoping to introduce hand-held devices that they say will serve the same function as the various small devices that the computer industry is counting on to help revive its fortunes. Both companies hope that their hand-held gadgets will be “iPod killers,” referring to Apple Computer’s popular device that plays music,” John Markoff writes for The New York Times.

“But in challenging the premise of Apple’s iPod, the gaming industry may be running the risk that Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, will return the favor by extending his own digital hub concept into the living room… Mr. Jobs has been highly critical of attempts to add video and gaming features to hand-held devices that compete with the iPod. The success of the iPod, he argues, rests on the idea that it allows users to do other things while listening to music on a portable device built to do nothing other than produce excellent sound,” Markoff writes.

Markoff writes, “If Mr. Jobs can reinvent the home-computer-as-entertainment-and-information-hub the way he led the creation of a seamless way of delivering digital music, analysts say, he could shake up the plans of all the other more powerful corporate interests trying to figure out what consumers want.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Interesting article, especially in light of the fact that Steve Jobs already has reinvented the home-computer-as-entertainment-and-information-hub. It’s called the Macintosh.