“The Japanese electronics giant also has a project under way to develop a portable device that blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP. The device is designed to compete against multifunction products such as Apple’s coming iPad tablet, these people said,” Wakabayashi and Kane report. “Both the new smart phone and the multifunction device are expected to work with Sony’s online media platform, due to launch later this month in the U.S. as the company’s answer to Apple’s iTunes.”
“The new products are targeted for launch in 2010, although many details such as price and certain specifications have yet to be finalized, these people said,” Wakabayashi and Kane report. “Sony’s media platform, temporarily named Sony Online Service, will offer many of the same movies, television shows and music already available on iTunes. But the company aims to differentiate its service by allowing a wide range of devices to tap into its catalog of games, mainly older titles released for the original PlayStation console.”
Wakabayashi and Kane report, “The new smart phone and other coming portable devices are critical elements of Chief Executive Howard Stringer’s turnaround plan.”
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, Sir Howard Stringer is using the same turnaround plan as the one tried by Captain Edward Smith. Except way slower and with much less turning.
Wakabayashi and Kane continue, “The new devices are meant to counter Apple and its wide range of products that connect to its iTunes media platform. Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone are pushing into the portable-gaming market inhabited by Sony’s PSP, while the iPad tablet is expected to disrupt the nascent e-reader market where the Sony Reader has already sold one million units.”
MacDailyNews Take: Disrupt? Okay, but let’s be clearer: Apple’s iPad will obliterate the nascent e-reader market and outsell Sony Reader’s rather anemic unit sales total within a few days.
Wakabayashi and Kane continue, “Sony was forced in February to slash its full-year PSP shipment targets by a third. Sales of the PSP Go—the latest version of its handheld, which doesn’t use packaged discs and only plays downloaded games—have been slow, hurt by the PSP Go’s hefty price tag. It costs $250, or $80 more than the PSP model that uses game discs.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like it’s almost time for Sony’s annual ass-kicking. It’s a good thing for Sony that Apple doesn’t make TVs.
If I only had a dollar for every “apple killer”….
Sony has become a parody of itself.
To compete against Apple, ya gotta ask yourself:
WWJD
“It’s a good thing for Sony that Apple doesn’t make TVs.”. Missing one word at the end -yet. I see Apple TVs in the future.
SOS – rather apt isn’t it?
Ummmm…. Isn’t it the the customers who determine whether the product is a killer… or not?
Seems to me that when a company announces that their latest product…that hasn’t shipped yet is going to slay another product already in the market borders on desperation and futility.
it’s been almost 3 years now, and i still haven’t seen a single “dead” iphone anywhere.
So most of the parts required to make these products are becoming readily available, off the shelf parts in China.
Hey Sony, fly me to China and let me rummage through all the different parts laying around. I’ll pick you out a nice screen, a Wi-Fi antenna, see what the factory CAD guy can some up with for an enclosure. We’ll install Windows on it and call it a day. Sound good?
I’m looking forward to sony’s new GPS camera unless Kodak gets on the ball.
More blood on iPod’s touchscreen…
8GB iPod touch is $189 at Costco.
or, for $50 more than a PSP, you can get a 32GB model…
Obviously, Sir Howard Stringer is using the same turnaround plan as the one tried by Captain Edward Smith. Except way slower and with much less turning.
LOL!!!!!!!!
lol…”annual ass-kickin’…” hahahaha
Sony Online Service = SOS, and that is what this is, an S.O.S
Didn’t Sony learn from the iPod incident?!
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Hmm, TV made by Apple, I like that idea…
Reflecting on Steve Job’s presentation when launching the iPad, he began by redefining Apple as a company that now sits best in the mobilie devices sector and then proceeded to throw some rivals logos on screen.
He was serving notice on these companies. He marked them as targets as he went on to launch the paradigm altering iPad that impacts each company’s product portfolio.
We now learn that he even had Amazon scrambling DURING the persentation to try to shore up its position with publishers.
Ever since then, whenever I read any piece on these rivals playing either ‘catch-up with hastily cobbled vapour-offering’ as above or some snide remark served up by a CEO who has been shamed as inept and flat-footed or otherwise trounced by Apple, I just can’t seem to get that lyric “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail” out of my head…
Apple is a leader and not a follower.
It’s the hammer that rivals have now come to dread and CEOs in non-competing companies (per Fortune) so admire…
(*El Condor Pasa by Simon & Garfunkel)
No need for Apple to make a TV. But Apple could license a special TV OS and leverage Apple TV and other Apple hardware into the equation.
Apple cant possibly be responsible for manufacturing all the worlds most popular devices. There has to be partnerships somewhere down the line.
Of course the OS would not be full Snow Leopard but the ease of use would be recognisably Apple with the Apple Logo appearing on screen at start up or waking from sleep.
A HDTV made by Apple means you can control it with just your mental thought or gestures in the air. Flip channel, adjust volume, heck even switch inputs by mere thought or gestures in the air.
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Really, what else can Sony do? They’ve got to compete. Maybe one day they will have another hit.
“To compete against Apple, ya gotta ask yourself:
WWJD”
Ah, I see the problem, our mantra these days is, “What would a Crazy Alien Sex Robot Do?”
Yawnnnn……. They probably should stick to TVs
Sony Online Service-
S. O. S.
I’m not concerned about any of this kind of rhetoric.
Ever notice that for years various companies have been telling everybody they are developing the iPod Killer this, or the iPhone killer that, or the iSomething killer whatever.
While Apple says nothing, and just goes about doing what it does.
When (if) these companies finally get a clue, they will shut up about what they’re planning.
Then, I’ll get concerned.
OK, good take, but to be fair to Captain Smith, he wasn’t actually at the helm at the time…
Sony, eh? Sony. … Sony. Sony.
Two other words come to mind. What are they again?
R, ro, rrrrooo …
YEAH!
Root Kit!
Jubei: I don’t wanna know about gesture or multi-touch for the porn channels!!!
Vizio HDTV
great tv’s and they are now selling models with Internet
Love to see them with ATV built in
And with all their modlels analects
to mirror your iPad
Sony’s offering may prove unpalatable for those who remember the US Army meal of chipped beef, famously called S.O.S.
wiki- chipped beef
Sony?
I’ve been mostly buying Panasonic / Technics products for the last 20 years…
The last Sony device I ever bought was a rack-mountable MD recorder. I’m still pissed about that ATRAC encryption. Sony should have made those darn things copy-able.
In the words of Marlon Brando, “It could’ve been a contender…”
MaWo: ‘poor’. As in, “Sony’s judgement.”
Heheheh, Sony Online Service..? Really Sony? That’s what you’re going with? S.O.S. ?? Wow, might as well just give up and pleeead for help!! Oh wait, that’s what you were doing…? oooooh sorry….
@Elsic1975a
I can see how a night with your girl will turn out.
“is that a gesture or are you just happy to see me”
“… the company aims to differentiate its service by allowing a wide range of devices to tap into its catalog of games, mainly older titles released for the original PlayStation console.”
Meanwhile the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad are playing the latest cutting edge games, with full Apple Multi-Touch, orientation, motion sensor, voice, compass and GPS support.
Wow Sony. I can hardly yawn. zzzzzz
Sony’s problem: They’re at the bottom of their current, if not last, business life cycle where Marketing took over management and drove the company into a wall.
The solution: Sony’s current management is required to be fired and replaced with gung ho entrepreneurs all over again. Until that happens, expect further rot. It’s a very old biznizz pattern.
Master Hajihiro Komatsu Itsugiro,
Crazy Alien Sex Robots are the future. It has been foretold.
Respectfully,
Grasshopper
Sony jumped the shark when it sued itself that time for piracy over video recorders. Idiots.
Don’t worry guys it wont be called SOS, it will be called 911 service.
It’s just too bad, I used to work for Sony and worked with broadcast equipment. Back in those days the consumer stuff was good too and cheap if bought as B or C stock.
I recently saw a Sony DXC-M3A camera for sale around 70 dollars (in China), with the case and Fujinon lens, but didn’t buy it. Am I stupid or what, just because it’s not cool to own Sony anymore.
Think maybe they’ll “Pause” this to await the results of the latest suit? Or maybe they are rushing ahead to get them “out there” before the results are known, so they can claim ignorance? Or have they licensed the tech?
It can be rough following something like the iPhone, unless you own the technology everybody else wants. There was – and is – no WAY I could be convinced to get an iPhone. Not because it wasn’t, and isn’t, great stuff, but because I have no need for it. An iPad, that may be a different story. Just not Gen 1. Something wrong with Gen 1? No. Just that I just bought this MacBook. Which has a USB port I can plug my mic into. The tech in these is the future. Soon. Near YOU. Right now, ONLY from Apple.
I remember when Sony was THE premium electronics brand. If you were cool (or your parents were cool) in the mid-90s, you had a Trinitron in your living room, a Playstation beneath it, and a Discman in your backpack (I’m dating AND aging myself here a little). And now look where they are. Their TVs are still pretty great, but the Korean makes are just as good, if not better, and are marketed a hell of a lot better to boot. Discman is dead, PS3 took forever to get momentum, Nintendo’s recovered itself to co-dominate in portable gaming…
What a situation. I never thought I’d see the day.
@McIntosh “a Playstation beneath it, .. I’m dating.”
You must be a young lad. If you had said Beta, then …
Sony Corp will soon turn into Sony corpse the way they fail to bring any innovation.