Which is why I'm surprised that Sony has failed so thoroughly to dominate in this new software-oriented era. Sony easily has various assets that would make them positively terrifying to Apple and Samsung if they got their crap together. Between their game ecosystem and their media (music and movies) labels, they could easily put together a Sony-branded e-shop that would give iTunes/App Store and Play Store a run for their money.
Combine that with the wide inventory of platforms they're in - imagine a Sony-branded de-Googled version of Android running on everything from PSPs to smart TVs.
They're excellently positioned, and they've demonstrated they can make good software in the various PlayStation-related devices.
Sony's media divisions are the dog that walks the owner. DRM must be slathered on everything and Sony wanted lock-in like formats, like ATRAC. The only two Sony divisions that have played nice with the real world is, first, their eBook division -- but even they couldn't do Android right on the latest Readers and so didn't garner the support and sales of the rooting community that the Nook Touch has. Second was the division that did the PalmOS-based CLIEs. And that division is long gone. Now Sony is trying to play catch-up with Android -- but their media divisions are still the dog walking the owner.
Not much to add to your analysis, since it's spot on.
I'd only like to add Sony's tendency for crippling devices, probably starting with the MiniDisc and continuing this fine tradition until today.
The underlying basis, of course, is the media division.
It's a shame really, when you look at Sony's past. Hell! The Walkman was an incredibly innovative device. While the iPod essentially was a repackaging of existing technologies (great repackaging, but still) Sony's Walkman was actually the invention of music on the go.
I know exactly what you mean about them crippling their devices. Quite a few years ago now I purchased a portable Sony MiniDisc recorder and a good quality microphone with the intention of recording local gigs, uploading them to my computer, splitting the tracks up, and creating a CD that I could give to the musicians.
Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that, whilst I could digitally upload music to the device, I could not digitally download music from it. Unbelievable! I did a few by attaching the headphone to the mic port on my computer and playing the music in real time, whilst recording on the PC. But this was such a time consuming process that I quickly lost interest. A shame, because I did get a few really good recordings.
The minidisk could have become the digital media if Sony weren't so afraid of piracy. It was relatively cheap, rewritable, couldn't get scratched and had (for the time) very large capacity.
Instead we got single-write cds (no one bothered with rewritable) until finally usb sticks made optical obsolete.
Oh man, I loved the Clie - high-res before high-res was a thing on that platform, a nice Blackberry-style scrollwheel on the side (sorely underrated feature, that), tough as nails and marred only by the earthshatteringly mediocre Palm Desktop program it used for syncing. I played the hell out of Warfare Inc on that thing. Palm OS was a tragedy - the loss of the Graffiti patent battle just ruined the platform, and it could've really done spectacular things going into the WiFi era.
But yeah, Sony seems like a very divided company - if the myriad divisions got together to work on a single unified customer-facing infrastructure of devices and e-store and whatnot, they could re-take that spectacular brand power they had in the early '90s. But their internal politics will never allow that, sadly.
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Which is why I'm surprised that Sony has failed so thoroughly to dominate in this new software-oriented era. Sony easily has various assets that would make them positively terrifying to Apple and Samsung if they got their crap together. Between their game ecosystem and their media (music and movies) labels, they could easily put together a Sony-branded e-shop that would give iTunes/App Store and Play Store a run for their money.
Combine that with the wide inventory of platforms they're in - imagine a Sony-branded de-Googled version of Android running on everything from PSPs to smart TVs.
They're excellently positioned, and they've demonstrated they can make good software in the various PlayStation-related devices.
Sony's media divisions are the dog that walks the owner. DRM must be slathered on everything and Sony wanted lock-in like formats, like ATRAC. The only two Sony divisions that have played nice with the real world is, first, their eBook division -- but even they couldn't do Android right on the latest Readers and so didn't garner the support and sales of the rooting community that the Nook Touch has. Second was the division that did the PalmOS-based CLIEs. And that division is long gone. Now Sony is trying to play catch-up with Android -- but their media divisions are still the dog walking the owner.
Not much to add to your analysis, since it's spot on.
I'd only like to add Sony's tendency for crippling devices, probably starting with the MiniDisc and continuing this fine tradition until today.
The underlying basis, of course, is the media division.
It's a shame really, when you look at Sony's past. Hell! The Walkman was an incredibly innovative device. While the iPod essentially was a repackaging of existing technologies (great repackaging, but still) Sony's Walkman was actually the invention of music on the go.
What a shame.
I know exactly what you mean about them crippling their devices. Quite a few years ago now I purchased a portable Sony MiniDisc recorder and a good quality microphone with the intention of recording local gigs, uploading them to my computer, splitting the tracks up, and creating a CD that I could give to the musicians.
Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that, whilst I could digitally upload music to the device, I could not digitally download music from it. Unbelievable! I did a few by attaching the headphone to the mic port on my computer and playing the music in real time, whilst recording on the PC. But this was such a time consuming process that I quickly lost interest. A shame, because I did get a few really good recordings.
The minidisk could have become the digital media if Sony weren't so afraid of piracy. It was relatively cheap, rewritable, couldn't get scratched and had (for the time) very large capacity.
Instead we got single-write cds (no one bothered with rewritable) until finally usb sticks made optical obsolete.
Oh man, I loved the Clie - high-res before high-res was a thing on that platform, a nice Blackberry-style scrollwheel on the side (sorely underrated feature, that), tough as nails and marred only by the earthshatteringly mediocre Palm Desktop program it used for syncing. I played the hell out of Warfare Inc on that thing. Palm OS was a tragedy - the loss of the Graffiti patent battle just ruined the platform, and it could've really done spectacular things going into the WiFi era.
But yeah, Sony seems like a very divided company - if the myriad divisions got together to work on a single unified customer-facing infrastructure of devices and e-store and whatnot, they could re-take that spectacular brand power they had in the early '90s. But their internal politics will never allow that, sadly.