“Early in 2005, more than a dozen Sony employees from the company’s consumer electronics divisions gathered for an unusual meeting in the tiny Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters of digital media start-up Kinoma. Kinoma Chief Executive Peter Hoddie, an Apple Computer alumnus, had been put in charge of high-profile Sony software development, including the Connect digital music project. For a company historically averse to using outside technology, this was a significant step,” John Borland reports for CNET News. “For more than two hours, the group met in the futon-lined public area of Kinoma’s offices. According to attendees, Hoddie gave a sales pitch, but not much more. When asked for details on the technology they’d be using for Connect, Hoddie declined to provide them, and the meeting turned contentious before breaking up, employees said.”
“Why did the electronics giant turn so uncharacteristically to an outsider for technology so critical to its future? Past and present insiders at Sony say Apple’s meteoric rise in music has left top Sony executives with both respect and envy for Apple’s products, even while they resist becoming dependent on Microsoft’s digital music technology,” Borland reports. “Kinoma and Hoddie appealed to their envy of Apple and their aversion to Microsoft.”
“The software that finally emerged pleased few. In a move virtually unprecedented in Sony’s history, executives in the company’s U.S. operations refused to release the software in their market. The European division didn’t have the same option, and Connect was released there and in Japan in November 2005,” Borland reports. “Customers began reporting critical bugs, sometimes rising to complete unusability. By January, Sony issued an apology to its customers, and recommended that if the repeated updates weren’t working, people should simply download the old pre-Connect SonicStage software. Executives looked at fixing the project, and decided against it. Patches were released until April, when development on the Connect software stopped altogether.”
The whole sordid, wonderful story is in Borland’s full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bruce” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Certain quotes just get funnier with each passing day: “Look at the resources at [Sony’s] disposal. They own all the intellectual property and they have the retail channel. It will be hard for Apple to maintain its market share.” – Douglas Krone, CEO of Dynamism.com. (source: NY Times, April 19, 2004)
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Related articles:
Sony advises: Do not use Sony Connect software, music application causes ‘major problems’ – January 23, 2006
Sony reorgs floundering Connect digital music outfit – January 20, 2006
Sony’s new Windows-only ‘Connect Player’ bears eerie resemblance to Apple iTunes – September 09, 2005
Sony Connect President in wake of iPod nano: ‘we will accelerate our challenge’ to Apple iPod – September 08, 2005
Sony forms ‘Connect Company’ to challenge Apple’s market-dominating iPod+iTunes – December 28, 2004
Apple iTunes Music Store vs. Sony Connect is no contest, Apple wins with ease – May 09, 2004
NY Times pans Sony Connect debut: ‘maybe they ought to call it Sony Disconnect’ – May 05, 2004
Analyst: Sony Connect will make it ‘hard for Apple to maintain its market share’ – April 19, 2004
It’s amazing that a company that was such a pioneer at one point, SONY, with the original Walkman, the first CD based game console Playstation, not to mention various other innovations, like Betamax, advances in Color TVs.. etc..
Still a manufacturing giant, but with the reputation somewhere near Anna Nicole Smith at the bottom feeding cesspool.
Sadly, SONY could make great strides and turn itself around and still have a black eye in its image that it might never be able to fully erase now.
Reputation is a fickle thing, and once it’s gone it’s usually gone for good.
Good job Peter, keep it up. – Steve
“They own all the intellectual property and they have the retail channel. It will be hard for Apple to maintain its market share.”
ha –“owned”
That was a good read. Felt for the first time how contentous this business is and how insulated most of us are from the dirt.
Wow! What complete cluster-fsck!
This just proves one thing: sometimes you win not because you’re great but because the competition is a joke. Windows “won” because in the early-to-mid 90’s, the competition (business-wise at least) was a joke — including Apple I’m afraid. Now Apple is winning on the iPod+iTunes front largely because the competition sucks. Of course, unlike Windows, Apple’s media products really are top-notch. So that makes it all the more appealing.
Well put, Cubert.
“Windows “won” because in the early-to-mid 90’s, the competition (business-wise at least) was a joke”
Has Be’s Jean Louis-Gassee ever come out of hiding?
It just makes the job Apple is doing look more and more impressive.
MacBook>BootCamp>XP>Upgrade to Vista
Isn’t it just lovely? *pukes*
Windows won because DOS won. DOS won because IBM was an idiot.
FYI, Peter Hoddie was on the original QuickTime team – I recall him demoing QT in 1990 – postage stamp size video of dolphins. And when it played in reverse the audience applauded! (‘cos PICS couldn’t do that.)
I fondly remember Steve announcing iTMS and smiling shyly/slyly when he spoke of how hard it was to create a quality end to end solution. He also said others would surely try, but it might take them a while to catch up to Apple. Not only is no-one on the same lap as Apple in this race, they’re not even on the same track.
“the first CD based game console Playstation”
Sega’s Mega CD console came long before Sony’s Playstation.
It’s not surprising that Sony doesn’t get it. Apple caused a paradigm shift, when that happens the former market leader becomes a useless dinosaur, unwilling and unable accept the fact that the world is no longer their oyster. They continue to try and apply the same old ideas that worked for them in the past, but are no longer applicable in the new market that has left them behind.
Windoze won because IBM didn’t copyright their bios and Compaq cloned it. The battle was over well before the 90’s
Compaq was the first company to have over $100,000,000 in sales their first year. All on the back of a single product. We sold 20% of that at the Byte Shops in the Northwest.
The momentum that put M$ into that 95% category started then. Add in the other clone manufacturers that were around at the introduction of the Mac and it was virtually impossible for Apple to unseat Microsoft.
There was nothing Apple could really do to overcome that. Jobs knew that.
There are more mishaps than just this with Connect online services. The whole thing was just Fubar.
Yep. Microsoft won that important early battle. But the war of David and Goliath is warming up nicely in my opinion.
If Apple are the only computer maker in a position to run every OS on their computers, at native speeds, simultaneously, at prices less than 10% more than the commodity box shifters, then things are going to get very interesting indeed. And they will. And Apple may well just end up winning the war.
And I’ll get very drunk indeed.
FTA: … Sony executives who felt Steve Jobs stole a digital music crown that was rightfully theirs.
That is a part of the problem, economic royalism. You have to keep proving to customers that you are the best by performing the best. Rest on your laurels — you are then merely history.
“Look at the resources at [Sony’s] disposal. They own all the intellectual property and they have the retail channel. It will be hard for Apple to maintain its market share.”
Isn’t that interesting how so WRONG they are. Apple has 80% of the online music market with hardware and software working near perfectly while Sony has two totally failed attempts to get even off the ground. And does this writer forget Apple is also in the retail business and expanding just about every other week with new stores accross America and the world.
Does the writer also forget that if Sony were to pull there music from iTunes they would essentially cut there own musical throat as they wouldn’t have an online sales outfit to make them any money.
Sony also blew it when they put that root kit that essentially caused a major security problem for users. So this caused mistrust with it’s own customers.
It all comes down to Sony has failed period.
At the bottom of all Sonys music plans is the protection of their music, which makes it more difficult (and dangerous: rootkit fiasco) to create an end-to-end solution. Ain’t greed a wonderful thing ! At this rate, they can forget about catching up to Apple