Sony learns its digital lesson
p2pnet.net News:- Ken Kutaragi, Sony deputy president and computer entertainment division chief, and other Sony employees have been, “frustrated for years” with management’s reluctance to market products like iPod, “mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights,” says the Associated Press.
The news comes as Sony says it’s sold some 800,000 PSPs (PlayStation Portable) in Japan since launching it a month ago.
But that’s not enough, The Register has Kutaragi saying, going on that he expects the company to ship three million units by the end of March and, “In part, it will meet that target by launching the PSP in Europe and the US, which it is expected to do in that month.”
In the meanwhile, Sony’s divisions are finally beginning to work together and share a common agenda, Kutaragi told the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo, says AP.
“It’s just starting,” he said. “We are growing up.”
A Big Seven movies studio and Big Four record label cartel member, Sony is to the fore in the pursuit of people who share files over the p2p networks, naming teenagers with camcorders as principal villains
Does the company’s coming of age also mean its manufacturing sections will now stop creating and mass marketing CD burners, blank discs and other duplicating technologies – such as camcorders?
Kutaragi didn’t say.
However, he was, “unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division,” says AP.
In the meanwhile, he also revealed Sony has submitted the PSP’s Universal Media Disc (UMD) format for consideration as an international standard and will let other companies incorporate UMD drives, states The Register states.
“This time, however, it will restrict UMD’s use as a games delivery mechanism to the PSP, opening only the format’s music and movie storage profiles,” it says, adding, “Whether the world actually needs yet another format, particularly with Flash drives reaching 2GB and beyond, is anyone’s guess.“
“It was painful to watch technology companies rush to sacrifice
their own customers by building products whose first allegiance is to
Hollywood, not to their owners,” says Freenet founder Ian Clarke.
“It’s encouraging that Sony may now have recognised the folly of this and we can only hope that others will follow.”
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See:-
content rights - Sony Video Chief Admits Strategic Mistakes, Associated Press, January 20, 2005
not enough – Sony PSP ship total hits 800,000, The Register, January 21, 2005
