UMD has been a thorn in Sony’s side since it was introduced as an ill-fated storage format for the popular PSP almost two years ago. Sony has had a string of proprietary format failures, and has now faded into relative obscurity.
That does not mean that movies for the PSP is a dead idea, though. Reports indicate that Sony is developing a movie download store of its own, much like that offered by Apple via its iTunes application. The movies could be stored on Memory Sticks (again, a proprietary format, though one far cheaper, more extensible, and larger user base than UMD), with up to ten titles of a 4GB card.
This puts one of the larger movie studios in position to compete head-to-head with Apple, though the real question remains: does Sony really want to put all of its motion picture eggs into one PSP basket? Or will it compliment, not compete against, iTunes and iPod?
Sony to enter video download market [Financial Times]