This week at Comdex, Sony Corp has emerged as one of the companies best placed to benefit from the changes taking place in the PC world and the consumer electronics industry. Not only has the company announced that it has $200m to spend on broadband ventures in the US and Asia but it has also inked a crucial deal with Palm Computing Inc, the implications of which will only fully be realized as it rolls out products based around the operating system. And with the PlayStation 2, due to be launched in the fall of next year, it has a true internet appliance. While other companies at Comdex have paid lip-service to the ‘Post-PC age’, Sony has really taken the bull by the horns. As Peter Glaskowsky, analyst at the Microprocessor Report says, Intel’s Craig Barrett speaks of ‘a billion connected PCs’ but if Sony and Nintendo are right, it won’t be PCs that are connected.
As we reported in October, executives at Sony view the PlayStation 2 not as a game machine but as a conduit for delivering all kinds of media and services. In 2001 it will launch a digital distribution venture in Japan, called e- Distribution, paid for with money from its $200m venture fund. The company will distribute games software, music and films via broadband cable TV networks through a cable modem to the PlayStation 2. Sony will no doubt launch a similar scheme in the US and Europe as its console rolls out worldwide.
Of course, Sony is not the only company looking at the potential of delivering media and services to the home via cable. Microsoft has made numerous investments in cable companies and is developing its own rival to the PlayStation, the X-Box. However, Sony has several advantages over Microsoft in this sphere. It has its own multimedia empire, which it can cannibalize to deliver films and music to the home, Microsoft will have to rely on partnerships. Sony will launch the PlayStation 2 in Japan before it goes global, allowing it a testing ground for the appliance and a chance to iron out any wrinkles. And Sony is an established name in the games console and consumer electronics markets, Microsoft is still primarily seen as an operating systems vendor.
Through its licensing deal with Palm, Sony is also now ready to make an assault on the handheld and PDA market. All the company has said is that it concentrate on developing handhelds that have audio and visual functions and wireless devices, which could mean a personal information manager combined with Sony’s digital Walkman technology.
Jack Gold, head of the mobile and pervasive computing practice at Meta Group, sees putting together an entertainment system remote control based on the Palm user interface. It would be simple to use, easy to program, with limited functionality (but what do you need to make a DVD player run a movie, and direct it to multiple video devices), he says. Further, I think Sony would like to get more into screen phones (another area PalmOS could help), and more integrated cell phone and PIM functions (particularly in Japan where they are more of a player than the US/Europe).
All of these devices need be connected and this is another area where Sony pulled a surprise out of the hat in Las Vegas. In his keynote, Sony president and CEO, Noboyuki Idei, demonstrated a Bluetooth short-wave radio adapter, called the InfoStick. The module is the same size as Sony’s Memory Stick storage device and can plug into existing Memory Stick slots. Over 20 consumer electronics manufacturers have said that they will support the Memory Stick.
Look at Sony’s work with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems Inc to make its Home Audio Video Interoperability (HAVi) specification work with both Microsoft’s Universal Plug and Play initiative and Sun’s Jini and the picture becomes clear. With the PlayStation 2 functioning as an internet access box, home entertainment system and home networking hub the firm plans a series of connected devices using the PalmOS, Bluetooth and its own iLink ‘firewire’ connection technology. And it expects to s
ell vast numbers of the consoles and devices, much more than it ever did with the original PlayStation. á
