“By taking on industry leader Apple, Sony will compete with a company that has sold 3 million iPods and 70 million songs at its iTunes Music Store, which celebrated its first anniversary last week. Other digital music competitors: Wal-Mart, MusicMatch, Napster and MusicNow,’ Jefferson Graham reports for TechNewsWorld.
“Sony aims to take on industry leader Apple today with an online music service whose songs will play only on Sony products. Internet analysts are scratching their heads, especially because the digital download service — called Connect — is geared toward supporting Sony’s MiniDisc, a 13-year-old format that has never hit big,” Graham reports. “But some retailers say sales of MiniDisc players perked up in the two years since Sony added the ability to record digital music onto them.”
“Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group thinks it’s way too late. ‘Walk into a store,’ he says. ‘You don’t see MiniDisc players promoted or people talking about them. Its time was three years ago, and it didn’t make it.’ Sony says Connect songs will work on portable CD players and Walkman devices that use Memory Stick removable flash media,” Graham reports.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Analyst: Sony Connect will make it ‘hard for Apple to maintain its market share’ – April 19, 2004
No Big Mac for Apple; McDonald’s to give away over 100 million Sony Connect songs – March 22, 2004
Is Enderle actually right about something?
Law of averages perhaps. Sooner or later it had to happen.
Alternatively, sell your AAPL and run for the hills.
Mini-disk? Is that something like a five and a quarter inch floppy? Oh yeah… I used to have one on my Osbourne CP/M based computer in 1981.
Ya… mini-disk, I remember.
Minidiscs are the greatest thing ever if you’re a musician and need a simple way to record rehearsals, lessons and performances. Or if you’re a reporter and need a way to record interviews. They sound great and, once you learn how to operate the obtuse controls, are easy enough to use. Sony *never* should have positioned them as the replacement to the walkman. It is a terrific recording device, but a lousy walkman.
My boss has an MD Walkman and thinks it is just the greatest thing ever ‘becuase you can reorder the playlist and change out songs on the disc.’ And get this, he bought an iPod (5GB) when they came out and gave it away, but still loves the MD Walkman!?!?!?!? (And this from a man who is none as being an early adopter in his field! Oh, yeah, and he still uses OS 9 on his iMac.) The funny thing is, I have a 40GB iPod, and I can add songs to my entire music collection and rearrange the playlist on it!
boo hoo its not compatible with os x
But that is clearly OS X on Sony’s frontpage! (http://www.sony.com)
Kool, you’re right! That’s hilarious! I guess their webmasters have a sense of humor.
Wow Enderle, lately I am actually reading your articles with a new optimistic attitude. Keep it up. Enderle must be reading Thurrotts articles and realizing how foolish he’s been and how blatantly biased Thurrott is. Welcome home Enderle…please just don’t disappoint us.
I disagree, Sony will be Apples biggest competitor in this area. They are not too late, this thing is still just a baby. Sony has a rep for being the Apple of the PC world, and they do a decent job with their computers. Sorry to be a downer, but thats my opinion…
“Is Enderle actually right about something?”
iSteve: even a broken clock shows the exact time twice a day.
Oh, no. Enderle makes a bit of sense… the end of the world is near.
I finally got my 30Gb iPod over the weekend, and I’ve been uploading my music onto it until the wee hours of the morning. Ripping my CDs is a tedious process, but it’s rewarding. I already have 1645 songs on it, and I STILL have 20Gb to go. I can’t wait to convert my Star Wars Radio Dramas from Cassette to ACC and add them, too. Each chapter is 30Mb each. I just don’t see this kind of flexibility with a Sony player. Sorry, Sony. You’re not going to get me. You never *had* me.
Plus, I discovered my iPod has Solitaire on it. I don’t need Windows anymore! LOL
mini-Disc? I thought I saw those in Eraser with AH-nold! Regarding this portable music player sector, Sony….you have just been ERASED!
Enderle making sense on the same day we’re having a lunar eclipse.
It’s all for you, Damien.
Before everyone starts thinking Enderle has turned over a new leaf, isn’t it true that HP is one of his clients? Dissing the iPod or iTunes would make them look bad.
In 3 months we will begin to really see how sony will do. All PC anal-ysts keep saying that Apple will be killed when Sony and MS enter the online fray, I think we can all tell that Sony is dead in the water from the get go by using a 3 year old unwanted technology. So that leaves MS and their “Rent on the Run” theory. How long will it take them to implement that? Probably when we see Longhorn and Paladin, when Apple has a three+ year headstart.
How ’bout that new iPod ad, I love it. And anyone watch the Toby Lightman – Devils & Angels Video? An iPod an unto itself, great. Apple should collect all music Videos that have iPod in them, Jenny from the Block anyone?
Sony missed the Minidisc bus way back when they failed to even market MD recordings through the Columbia House Record Club. Neglecting to market to such an “installed user base” was downright stupid.
Now pit an MD player next to an iPod ?? Sheer lunacy.
This may be bad news for iTMS. Enderle is always wrong!
I hate sony’s proprietary memory stick crap..
shoes on the other foot i guess…
I was wondering you know since the only downloaded music you can put on your ipod is from the itunes music store. Is there anyway to get around that? If you burn the mp3’s to a cd-r can you put that on your ipod
…tick…tick…tick…kaboom in a room….iPod stands alone…. what are Sony, Walmart and Microsoft thinking… “oh it’s Apple, we can walk over them again just like we did with the PC we ripped off”….WRONG…. they think Apple didn’t learn…Welcome to the new world boys and girls. iPod is just the beginning. Apple is slowly perfecting their strategy using iTMS and iPod as a test vehicle. When they have all the pieces in place, the new Empire (a.k.a. Apple) will strike back for all users for the next 100 years. God help Microsoft…. First, iPod/iTunes domination, soon downloadable video, cutting edge hardware (G5), killer OS(X) + a company that now believes in open-source.
Yipee.
I was woundering why walmart got in the music download business in the first place. Walmart has horrible service!
jon k:
You can put any MP3 you have onto the ipod. ITunes (the program, not the store) recognizes and accepts MP3 music files whether downloaded from the internet or ripped from a CD. Once on iTunes, it can be then synched to the iPod.
Easy. It’s what most of the world outside the U.S. does, since only the U.S. can use the iTunes music store.
What you can’t do is download proprietary WMV files and have them instantly recognized by iTunes. But MP3s are NO PROBLEM at all.
There’s this weirdly pervasive myth that iPods don’t work with anything but iTMS purchases … it just ain’t so.
ANY MP3s will play on your iPod.
Repeat …