Sony’s Android-powered Xperia Play debuted to mixed reviews last year, but according to a newly published patent, Sony was apparently toying with the idea of making something much more interesting before settling on the design they ran with.
Not content with a single physical keypad meant strictly for gaming, the images associated with the patent depict a Sony smartphone with two of them — one with the game controls we’ve become familiar with, and another with a full QWERTY keyboard that would slide down over the game pad. → Read More
While I often prefer to watch analysts hoist themselves with their own petard, it’s not often that one dumps out a bit of drivel so short-sighted as George Colony at Forrester. In short, Colony believes that Apple is the next Sony – a desiccated organization that has nothing new to offer the world. While he’s right about Sony, he’s wrong about Apple.
Analysts, to be fair, do know a thing or two about a thing or two. I’m sure he’s great at plumbing financial data and picking expensive steaks. But in this Forbes piece he cites Max Weber’s Theory of Social And Economic Organization, a book that I read in college but haven’t had the time to peruse of late. Weber, writing in 1947, breaks organizations down into legal/bureaucratic, traditional, and charismatic. Weber probably knew from charismatic, considering his demi monde, but I doubt his version of a charismatic leader – “he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” – is applicable in any case in our modern business climate. → Read More
A while ago, people opined that the PS Vita – despite horrible battery life and a dearth of compelling game titles – could become a sort of “gamers iPad,” a tool that ends up being more than just a console. That dream is coming closer to fruition with the announcement of Skype for Vita.
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In light of the recent layoffs by Sony to the tune of 10,000 employees, I think it’s important to see where Sony currently resides in the tech ecosystem and why the company, once the darling of the CE and PC set, went so far off track.
As background, I recommend you read Joel Johnson’s excellent series on Sony. He wrote it two years ago on Gizmodo and it is one of the most thorough and enjoyable examinations of what was then a sputtering juggernaut. One of the funniest pieces is this man-on-the-street video that asks people what they think of Sony. The kindest praise? One lad called the company “Decent” and another said he owned a Sony TV. The last guy in the video takes a moment to compose his thoughts and says “Sony: fast, cheap, and Japanese.”
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So the reports have proven to be true: Sony has now officially said that it will be reducing its headcount by 10,000 people worldwide, some six percent of its workforce, as the struggling electronics giant reorganizes under new management and its new “One Sony” plan.
Sony says the employee reductions will be made over the course of this fiscal year, and will also include some employees leaving the company through sale and transfer. Meanwhile, the organizational restructuring will see Sony strengthen its focus on the core units of digital imaging, gaming and mobile; attempt to turn around its ailing TV business and expand in emerging markets. Altogether Sony estimates that the restructuring will cost it ¥75 billion ($926 million). → Read More
Sony enters a new era April 1st. On that day Kazuo Hirai will replace Sir Howard Stringer as Sony’s president and CEO. The challenges ahead are massive; Sony is facing a financial and organizational calamity. Sony is simply too big and has fallen too far and Hirai is tasked to bring Sony back to glory.
Sony just announced a new corporate organization that shows drastic change is underway. Under this strategy, dubbed One Sony, separate Sony divisions will share management, hopefully streamlining decisions and creating a more unified end-user experience that better utilizes Sony’s content offering. Sony under Stringer was an unwieldy multi-headed beast. Hirai is clearly trying to tighten the reins. It just might work and it has to work. → Read More
Google’s Chromebooks haven’t exactly made a splash, but apparently not everyone has been scared off. Sony seems to think there’s gold in them thar laptops, and they’re making their own. For now it’s known as the VCC111 (probably shorthand for “Vaio Chromebook Computer, series one, 11-inch display”), according to documents and pictures from FCC testing.
The understated look continues with these Vaio Chromebooks, even as far as what appears to be a matte black unbranded shell. A white version is also shown in the test setup photos. But the most interesting thing is the processor, which is listed simply as T25, and may in fact be Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip by that name. An ARM laptop? Hey, if Microsoft can do it, why not Google and Sony? → Read More
Sony’s been bringing it lately, with a trifecta of monosyllabic Xperia goodness at CES and MWC. I personally believe that a key ingredient in the secret sauce may be Sony’s ability to keep the new phones classy — the Xperia S, U, and P all got high marks from us in terms of build, feel in the hand, and overall aesthetic quality. But the newest member of the Xperia clan may have trouble living up to the standard; that is, if the reality of this “floating touch” thing is anything close to what I’m imagining.
The freshly announced Sony Xperia Sola is definitely trying to be a forward-thinking phone. Sony’s packed it full of fun technology like NFC-enabled Xperia SmartTags, a (relatively small, yet actually perfectly proportioned) 3.7-inch Reality Display with a Sony Mobile Bravia Engine, 3D surround sound audio tech, and access to the new Sony Entertainment Network. Oh, and we can’t forget that whole “floating touch” thing. → Read More
Besides a fear of imminent conjunctivitis from handling the same phone as hundreds of others at the Sony Xperia Press Event at the GSMA Mobile World Congress…what else comes to mind?
This phone — a model marketed mostly toward a younger segment — is, to me, reminiscent in some minuscule way of the old Sony W series phones I loved so much (way back in the day). I think it’s the thickness that reminds me of its Cro-Magnon predecessor. → Read More
Sony is working on a new technology that authenticates devices via the power outlet, allowing for a few interesting applications. The system, based on the Japanese Felica standard, would allow authenticated power usage, power management for cafes and offices, as well as payments for power use. The system could authenticate with the power outlet via a chip inside the laptop or device or through a smartcard that user waves at the outlet.
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If there’s been one complaint my contacts inside large CE companies have had, career-wise, it’s been the inability to rise far in the hierarchy. While there are clear exceptions to this rule, the complaint has always been that succeeding in Asian companies has been contingent on (literally) speaking the language and knowing the rules of the road, as it were, culturally.
When Sir Howard Stringer took the reins at Sony, it looked like this tendency had been bucked. However, with the appointment of Kazuo Hirai, it looks like Sony is going back to the old ways – but why? → Read More
You can’t believe everything you read, nor can you trust everything you hear on TV. Especially if it sounds something like “four out of five people choose LG Cinema 3D over Sony and Samsung for overall 3D experience.”
Apparently the Better Business Bureau (more specifically the National Advertising Division) “has recommended that LG Electronics USA discontinue advertising claims made for the company’s Cinema 3D Television and 3D glasses.”
Back in June of 2011, LG sent out a press release claiming that four out of five customers prefer LG Cinema 3D television over Sony and Samsung in a number of different categories including brightness, color, picture quality, glasses, and overall 3D experience. The research was done by a company called Morpace Inc., which tested the TVs at their default settings without any branding shown. → Read More
In the market for a new point and shoot? Didn’t think so. Why don’t you take a gander at the new Sony shooters anyway? → Read More
More news on the Sony-Olympus alliance that’s supposed to be announced soon: Japan’s biggest business daily The Nikkei is reporting today that big S is interested in purchasing a stake as large as “20%-30%” in its potential, scandal-hit partner (that would be up from the 0.03% Sony currently owns).
The capital and business alliance would be mainly aimed at bringing together Sony’s strength in imaging sensor technology with Olympus’ expertise in endoscopes and other medical equipment. → Read More
Sony has announced a new line of image sensors that will, in all likelihood, end up in dozens of smartphone models. The improvement is not in megapixels, which have more or less hit a ceiling, but in the actual layout of the light-sensitive wells that make up the pixels in the image.
The new sensors have, in addition to the usual red, green, and blue-filtered pixels, an unfiltered pixel element as well that will accept any wavelength of light. It can’t be used to determine color, but it will add (they say) to both sensitivity and brightness. Essentially what they’re doing is including a hard luminance-detecting element. This is good, much more accurate than taking the average from the RGB elements, and should in fact make low-light photography significantly better. → Read More
It would be a tie-up between two giants: Diamond Weekly, a major Japanese business journal, is reporting [JP] on its website today that scandal-hit Olympus is about to ink a capital and business alliance deal with Sony. Olympus has been under fire for months, after it was revealed the company has covered up large losses for the past 20 years.
At some point, Olympus was in danger of getting de-listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but it’s now on a 3-year “probation” that requires the company to improve governance. According to Diamond, Olympus’ top management has been consulting with various electronics companies but chose Sony as the best partner to help get it out of one the biggest corporate scandals in Japanese history. → Read More
Smartphone maker Sony Ericsson this morning posted a pre-tax loss of 247 million euros ($318 million) in the fourth quarter of 2011, after reporting a profit of 31 million euros in Q3 2011. The company, a 50:50 joint-venture between Sony and Ericsson, blames “intense competition”, “price erosion” and effects from the flooding in Thailand as some of the main drivers for the drop.
Sales for the quarter were approximately 1.3 billion euros, down 16 percent year-on-year. → Read More
The Playstation Vita handheld system, unveiled at E3 last year, went on sale just before the holidays in Japan. It saw serious sales: around 325,000 units (500,000 by Sony’s reckoning) were sold in its opening week. Naturally numbers tend to drop after the initial rush, and the next week saw healthy sales of around 72,000. But The numbers kept decreasing, and it is now reported that for the week ending January 15, the new device sold only 18,361 units, not including online sales. That’s less than the PSP. → Read More
Sometimes you just need a file transferred onto a flash drive quickly. Enter The Sony MicroVault Mach. These boys are fast. Some would say SuperSpeed fast. → Read More
Apple users probably have more than enough media on their iDevices to keep them entertained on the go, but Sony Network Entertainment President Tim Schaaff thinks there’s room for another media service on iOS. According to VentureBeat, the company’s Music Unlimited streaming service will land on iOS some time in Q1 2012.
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