Sony’s trouble in the digital era
Yet another article on the hard work Sony’s newly appointed CEO, Howard Stringer, has in front of him.
The trouble with Sony is it’s both an electronics and an entertainment company. Sony Music executives lose their sleep at the idea of a portable device that plays MP3 files natively, and doesn’t restrict the user in every way imaginable, so the hands of Sony engineers are tied. (ATRAC3 and non-native MP3 support till very recently, anyone?)
I bet the dream of any Sony engineer working in the portable audio department is to wake up one day, walk to the Sony Music/Sony Pictures HQ and say:
Look, if we don’t build it, someone else will. Actually someone else already does this, and owns ~70% of this booming market with profits skyrocketing. Your ‘lock the user so bad he won’t know what hit him’ scenario would work if we were the only electronics company on this planet. As things are, people choose another company and the electronics division is losing money. Go on with making music and movies, let us do our job and learn to live with it.
Then on his way home, our hero should also walk to the marketing department geniuses and tip them that overpricing a crippled product can’t help you win marketshare (Marketing 101).
How the iPod Ran Circles Around the Walkman [nytimes.com]
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