09.04.07
Sony innovation
In today’s Marketplace section, Yukari Iwatani Kane wrote from Tokyo about Sony. The article was titled “Sony to Challenge Apple in TV, Movie Downloads”. It mentioned that,
Since the failure of the Walkman to beat the iPod, Sony has been struggling to come up with a new product that defines the industry standard in innovation.
This general idea of Sony failing since losing to the iPod is repeated throughout the article, along with some conjecture about what Sony is likely to do to turn its fortunes around.
However, I find it odd that the article doesn’t mention the reason why most everyone I know(and Slashdot) has developed a distaste for Sony hardware; the fact that Sony releases moderate quality products that are crippled into products that worry most about stopping you from doing stuff.
This hit home recently when I was playing with a PSP, and went to download a trailer for a PSP game, and had to agree to a EULA before I was allowed to watch it.
Again, I had to agree to abide by certain rules so that I could watch an ad.
Sony has a history of having propietary devices that lock you out about as much as American cell phones do. When you can choose an iPod, which plays MP3s and Apple’s format, or the first few generations of Sony MP3 players, which played only Sony’s format, the choice is obvious. Why would you want to force yourself to convert all of your files in order to play them? It takes a lot longer, the files are lower quality, and you can’t just copy them to another player or computer.
Sony’s methods can work, as long as all the other hardware providers provide equally restrictive hardware, but as long as Sony is competiting against hardware makers who worry more about marketability than pleasing content companies, I fail to see why anyone would want to buy Sony products.