columbo
08-13-2003, 06:11 PM
If they came out with an HDD player that played MP3's now, they would clean up. Totally. With their design skills applied to an HDD player, iPod would probably be blown out of the water. Yet they still persist in promoting an obsolete format (MD) and unsuccessfully trying to add 'MP3... kinda' capabilities to it, producing MP3/CD players that are inferior to iRivers, and grossly overpriced DRM-restricted, bizarrely transcoding players.
Yet they still sell because they're really well designed. Even a DRM-restricted Sony HDD player would sell and sell. So why don't they? Do they have a problem with Toshiba or something?
From "MP3 goes legal" in the August Stuff mag -
If the iPod is as revolutionary as the original Walkman, why is it Apple, not Sony, that is making it? Despite the strength of the Walkman brand - Sony sold 19 million cassette, CD and digital audio devices last year - there still isn't one with a hard drive.
Sony's problem is that it doesn't just make electronics, it also produces films and music, and MP3 is threatening the profits of these parts of the company. This has led to some farcical situations, such as Sony suing an internet radio station that it owned a part of, and - even more notoriously - its manufacturing and selling copyright-protected psuedo-CD's that won't even play on Sony computers (let alone anyobodys else's).
The result in terms of half hearted software and a fear of mass storage, with the result that the firm's flagship Memory Stick Walkman is, while beautiful and sonically awesome, simply not as functionally impressive as the iPod.
This was part of a thread Why Doesn't SONY? (http://ipodlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3507) which addressed this very question.
I think it explains it perfectly.........