“Analysts say Sony poses the biggest challenge yet to the iPod, although they add that Apple should still be up to the challenge of defending a market that has become a key part of the company’s overall success,” Benny Evangelista writes for The San Francisco Chronicle.
“‘We think this is the year Sony starts breathing down Apple’s neck in music,” said technology analyst Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group. ‘Customers who look to the iPod as the only advanced styling and fashion statement out there are going to take more than a second look at the Walkman.’ Sony made wearing headphones in public fashionable and introduced the concept of a purely personal stereo system that could be enjoyed anywhere, from the street to libraries to public transit. The Walkman line broadened into several generations of products that played tapes, the radio and CDs,” Evangelista writes.
“Apple’s marketing prowess pushed the iPod and the smaller iPod Mini past the Walkman to become pop culture’s new slick, cool portable music device. Apple, which had been solely a computer-maker, is now known as much for music. Its online iTunes Music Store has sold 95 million songs, and Apple has sold more than 2 million iPods,” Evangelista writes.
“Last week, Sony introduced a silver, 20-GB model called the Walkman NW- HD1. The player, due to hit store shelves in the United States and Japan in mid-August, will weigh about 4 ounces and cost about $400, the same price as the 5.6-ounce iPod with the same size hard drive. Sony officials also tout the NW-HD1’s 30-hour battery life, compared with eight hours for the iPod,” Evangelista writes.
“The new Walkmans and Pocket Players will tie in to Sony’s SonicStage music management program, which can play songs encoded in the popular MP3 and Windows Media formats on the computer. However, the program has to convert songs to Sony’s proprietary Atrac3 format, the only file type the portable players will support,” Evangelista writes. “‘Are they going to kill Apple? Absolutely not,’ said Van Baker, a vice president at research firm GartnerG2. ‘If Sony Connect is compared to iTunes, there ain’t no comparison. It’s hard to argue with Apple’s success. Right now, the business model is to use your music to sell your hardware.’
“Doherty said he believes Apple and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs have ‘several things in the fire’ to keep Sony’s Walkman from outrunning the iPods,” Evangelista writes. “‘No one on the planet dares ignore Steve Jobs,’ Doherty said. Consumer electronics-makers like Sony and Panasonic have ‘a fear of what he sees that they’ve missed.'”
Much more in the full article here.
I think I might have the explanation for the longer battery life – thanks iPodder and Hywel for the clue. At “As the Apple Turns” http://www.appleturns.com/episode/?date=7/2/2004 I read that Sony claim their NW-??? will hold 13,000 songs encoded at… wait for it… 48 kbps!!! Perhaps 48 kbps files require much less HD access and extend battery life?
As the Apple Turns comments that “48 Kbps songs in *any* format are probably going to sound like a portable handheld AM radio playing from the bottom of a well while a few dozen people pop bubble wrap nearby.” Indeed.
Mac Beth, you’re so bad -LOL-
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but what’s that, you need to recharge overnight after just 15 minutes? hell, I’m pushing fifty, and I don’t need that long to recharge.
u would after i was through with ya :p
30 hours on a Sony Walkman NW-HD1? Yeah, if you want to listen to LOW BITRATE songs! The battery probably lasts as long as an iPod if it plays music in 128kb/s. Sony cheats by using a much lower bit rate (64kb/s, I think) in order to crank out the so-called 30 hours of battery life. The less computing the Walkman does, the more juice it has to play songs.
It’s a marketing trick. When customers buy that Sony iPod-wanna-be thing and realize that you have to listen to low quality sound in order to get the 30 hours of play time, they’d bring it right back to the store the next day for a full refund!
Correction:
48kb/s — even worse!
I’ll have some of what hagar57 is drinking.
great stuff what people are saying: apple actually meeting some competition is great.
one problem.. these sony machines don’t play mp3’s… which means stolen music doesnt play on them..
and … dear god… lest we forget the Connect Service is a complete (and I mean it) piece of garbage, whereas the iTunes music store is almost perfect.. (2 million songs to go?)
Thurrott seems to think Apple has to lie about iPod/ipod mini demand..
you look at the store, and it seems pretty obvious
Well, Thurrott is a biased idiot, so I ignore him on all accounts.
Keep it coming Sony. Competition is good. Apple makes great products under pressure. It would be foolish to think that Apple would innovate at a break-neck pace if they had only to beat the other players like Dell.
Sony makes some good-looking products that don’t look exactly like Apple’s. They compete more directly with other PC makers and bring up the common denominator. PCs suck a little less because of Sony. If we are forced to use PCs, it’s good to have a few Sonys out there.
So I say keep the competition coming, because I really enjoy the insanely great products Jobs and Co come back with when the competition starts to get close. Companies like Sony keep the RDF from getting out of control and ungulfing everything Mac.
Anyone who gets rid of their iPod for a Dell DJ, and proclaims the DJ is better, is nothing less than an idiot.
Apple should welcome this competition from Sony. This is another force against WMA. If WMA becomes the standard, then Micro$in has all the power and marketshare, even if they lose money.
Also, this competition from Sony, who is an instantly respected player, will make the iPod even better for us all and improvements will come quicker and
cheaper(eventually). I am glad Sony didn’t support WMA, but I am suprised that Sony didn’t go with AAC in order to be an immediate player.
Keep in mind…higher fidelity music requires more battery power.
If Apple can increase battery life(without losing AAC[Dolby] quality and add a color screen and view iPhoto slideshows at a slightly less price point, then I don’t think it can be beat anytime/anywhere, even by Sony.
I agree most consumers don’t care what AAC is, but if this format was marketed as Dolby instead of AAC, then there would be even higher marketshare. The word Dolby is infused into everyones brain and represents
a better quality sound…they should have gone with this. The little things like that make a difference.
I’m glad Sony didn’t support WMA as well, but they will only be a force if they gain enought popularity. I don’t think Sony likes MS anyway, I think they view MS as a necessary evil (for the Windows OS). Note that Sony doesn’t use Pocket PC for their PDA’s, only Palm OS. I don’t think they promote office or any other MS software in their computers as well (that would have to be double checked).
I do hope Sony gets a little traction with ATRAC3, but due to the fact that their players don’t support MP3, or AAC, I think their impact will be serverly limited. Still, anyone who buys a Sony player, is someone who didn’t buy a WMA-compatible player, and that’s one person NOT supporting MS and their WMA ‘standard’.
A few years ago, I asked a friend from Glasgow, “I know the Scots aren’t in love with the English and quite obviously, neither are the Irish, but what are the feelings between the Scots and the Irish?”
His reply was, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
“Ed” has discovered this 5,000 year old fundamental principle of warring civilizations
Throughout history, too may dictators underestimated the friendship that can form when smaller, even opposing, forces face a greater common enemy.
paul thurot only bought an ipod planning to throw it away just so he could say he did. what a genius.
less is more
that would be 10 year old Glenmorangie.
[url=http://www.glenmorangie.com]http://www.glenmorangie.com[/url]
As other have mentioned, song bitrate can have effects on battery life since the higher the bitrate, the larger the songs and the less song you can fit into RAM at one time. It forces the HD to spin more to pay the same number of songs. Sony uses 48 kbps in the calculation which effectively more than doubled the battery life.
Another is battery care. If you don’t take care your battery well, it will have less and less charge. Battery life is not finite (common sense, but from the controversy, it seemed people forgot that), the longer it’s been in use, the shorter time it powers devices. Yet another factor is battery size. Some devices contains big batteries, which lasts longer. And finally, the battery type itself.
“‘No one on the planet dares ignore Steve Jobs,’ Doherty said.
What a great quote!
Cheers, hagar57.
How nice of Sony to buy Hitachi drives. I would like other manufacturers to do the same, leading to economies of scale and R&D funds to help develop the microdrive.
So that when I buy my iPod Mini, I’ll get more capacity and pay less.
Analists are not idiots. They are very well paid to say the stupid things they say. However, they should be called Propagandists, not Analists.
It will change the way we live.
LOL…
People are such idiots 🙁
I’d like to see truly competitive products on the market, even though I’m an iPod owner and Apple fan. Sony’s new product, however, doesn’t do it.
It’s actually a bit disappointing to watch a company with Sony’s history create such an uninspired product.
Hurry! We need to find crap writer Turt-rot to criticize Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format!!! Where is that Windows HO?
Apple has already fired off a shot at Sony – and it’s making the national headlines – saying Sony has been less than accurate about the capacity of its new players and the quality of the music that it can supposedly hold at those numbers – see this: http://www.macminute.com/2004/07/07/sony
BuriedCaesar,
You beat me to it. I wondered how long it would take anyone (apart from As the Apple Turns) to take note of Sony’s claim that a bitrate of 48 kpbs produces high-quality songs.
Mac Beth,
15 minutes? My lower back twinged when I read that. Hell, I read your posts and I’m ready for a box of Kleenex and a cigarette. Such is middle age and the curse of premature….dammit! Where’s that bloody Kleenex?