“Sony is preparing to take another swing at Apple Computer’s iPod digital music player, a top Sony executive said today. The company is developing a new music player that will go on sale in the U.S. and other markets over the next year, alongside a companion download service and software, said Takao Yuhara, senior vice president of Sony, at a briefing with reporters in Tokyo. The player will be ‘typically Sony,’ he said,” Martyn Williams reports for IDG News Service. “Apple has a commanding lead in the music player market and is particularly strong in the U.S., where it’s estimated to command more than 80 percent share… The new player will be launched within the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2007, Yuhara said.”
“Sony sold 4.5 million digital music players in the year to March, and expects this to rise to 5.5 million in the current year, the company said Thursday when it announced its financial results. In contrast, Apple shipped 8.5 million iPods in the first three months of this year alone, it said earlier this month,” Williams reports. “Sales of all audio products at Sony fell 6.2 percent in the last year.”
Full article here.
“Sony reported Thursday that losses for the January-March quarter widened to 66.5 billion yen ($581 million), worse than the 56.5 billion yen loss it marked the same period the previous year. Massive restructuring costs, as well as research and development costs for its usually profitable game division, were behind the red ink,” The Associated Press reports. “Sony shares tumbled 5 percent Friday… Yuhara said Sony planned to introduce a portable music player that will compete against Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod in the U.S. market within the current fiscal year through March 2007… He declined to give other details but said it will link with new kinds of music download services to win over American buyers.”
Full article here.
Typically Sony? As in, overstating capacity by measuring songs encoded bit rates whose quality approaches AM radio under a bridge? Or “typically Sony” as in creating goofy proprietary media formats that nobody uses? Or “typically Sony” as in failing to come up with an “iPod killer” for over half a decade and counting? Sony needed to give it up quite some time ago. It’s so far past too late in the digital music player market, that it’s now not even a joke. It’s just sad and perplexing. Concentrate on your TV business before Samsung buries your completely like Apple has in digital music players and online music services. Work on finally shipping the PlayStation 3. Play to your current strengths. Duh, forget about music, Sony: you lost that market long ago.
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Related articles:
BusinessWeek: Apple’s iPod+iTunes Store ‘kicking the stuffing out of Sony’ – March 03, 2006
More blood on Apple iPod’s Click Wheel: Sony’s Walkman Bean is cooked – February 13, 2006
Bear Stearns analyst: ‘Apple is becoming what Sony always wanted to be’ – January 27, 2006
Sony advises: Do not use Sony Connect software, music application causes ‘major problems’ – January 23, 2006
Apple tramples Sony in Japan: iPod grabs 60-percent share of DMP market, Sony drops under 10-percent – December 22, 2005
Sony’s quarterly profit drops by nearly half – October 27, 2005
Why Sony, why?!!!
Why can’t you see the obvious marketing opportunity before your EYES! All you need to do is sacrifice the music player and do everything else. Market yourself as Apple-compatible: announce that you’re going to make all your Hollywood movies download on iPods via the iTMS, your DVD extras work on Macs, your stereos stream from Airports, your car stereos charge your Nanos, your LCD monitors work with all Macs, your wireless video streaming work with Mac mini’s, all your CDs work on Macs without rootkits, your HD cameras connect to Macs to burn movies with your DVD media and play on your HD TVs which also stream video from a Mac mini running Front Row. Mark your goods as “works with iPod and Macintosh”.
Make Sony the price premium product it used to be – more expensive but you know it is quality, will work and people can brag about their purchase. Make it so that if we purchase only Apple and Sony gear we are able to do everything we need.
I got a fever……and the only perscription that can cure it is more cowbell. (or less-also ran
‘ipod killers’)
ROTFL!
>”History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men.”
‘God-zeerah!’
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A funny thing happened at Best Buy yesterday. A best buy employee was trying to sell a man an inferior MP3 player based on the fact it has FM radio. I was staning right next to the iPod FM radio adaptor. Must be desperate to push product taking up shelf space.
MacMan: “Must be desperate to push product taking up shelf space.”
Sounds like the Best Buy employee was being shelfish.
MDN mentions Samsung as a rival to Sony’s TV business, but I think that Samsung have plans that go way beyond that.
Samsung have come out of nowhere and produced a very compelling cellphone which might win sales that might have otherwise gone to Sony Ericsson.
Samsung are now building the memory for many iPods and will be making the controllers for the next generation of iPods. That’s an immense market.
Samsung are getting quite closely involved with Apple – who knows where that might lead ? We’ve already seen how Intel are pleased having Apple as a customer who doesn’t merely buy the best of what’s on offer, but who wants to get heavily involved with specifying the next generation of chips and making them even better, not merely faster. If Apple and Samsung are working together in the same way, then Samsung could be really going places soon.
Sony needs to pay careful attention to what Samsung are doing. Sony have a much higher profile at the moment, but Sony is a company that’s stagnating and has recently released a number of products which have failed. Sony are also annoying their music customers by using intrusive CD copy protection and also annoying their artists by failing to pay them a fair proportion of the revenue from iTMS. Sony is behaving badly on multiple fronts. Unless they can get their act together very rapidly and turn around the way they operate, there will be creating an opportunity for another company to overtake them.
Sony will be ‘Big in Japan’.
You heard it here first.
What Sony really needs to do, and what all of the other companies striving to compete with iPod need to do, is work together on a common interface for their devices to dock with, a common music service that will fit all of them, and common formats. This whole divided kingdom thing is obviously not working out for them.
Competition, however pathetic, is good for the market. Also, people can’t accuse Apple of MP3 player monopoly.
The problem with Sony is that their products are typical.
Apples at its best under pressure from competitotrs. In Apple fashion, kicking their asses beyond their drawing boards.
The thing about the iPod is, it’s not really all that great of a digital music player, and there are certainly players out there that can do more for less money, and are compatible with more formats, etc. The things that make the iPod edge out everyone else are dual platform compatibility (even if iTunes for Windows sucks major @$$), seamlessness of the overall functionality, and just how prevalent it is (everyone has one, so you’re not the odd kid on the block). The player itself is honestly mediocre.
As soon as the other companies quit trying to beat Apple on the hardware end of things, and focus more on the overall experience, and God forbid dual platform functionality, they will have something worth buying.
i – Podzilla .. zilla .. zilla .. !!!
Ampar .. You’re crackin’ me up. Mmmm, Shelfish
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