Comments on: Could an open Sony beat Apple?

The CEO of Sony thinks the company could have beaten Apple with open technology. How about creating a better user experience?

[t8]

Yes it was Sonys market to lose and that is exactly what they did.

Sony was in the position of trying to sell more hardware while trying to preserve their music from piracy.
What they should have done was sell the music part of their business (which would have been worth more then) and then they could have gone full tilt toward making MP3 players and the like. Instead of synergy their properties stopped each other from innovating and they tried to keep people stuck on the old paradigm of CDs.

This is a lesson to anyone wanting to fight against technology and what people want to do. If your buisness plan is to compete against the Internet, technology, and the way people consume digital content, then you will lose.

Their legacy is a case book on how not to run a business. But maybe they can bounce back? There is always that chance, after all Apple nearly went bust once.

[gigiguar]

I completely agree with you, when you say "If your buisness plan is to compete against the Internet, technology, and the way people consume digital content, then you will lose."

Here in Italy we had many internet TV set-top boxes, but all had a closed-garden business model. I think AliceTV and TiscaliTV are good examples of how a closed business model is not what people want. Now, some companies started rethinking their business model (and some are closing down). Maybe we will see a new version, the "open garden" version of their set-top boxes? Here in italy Tvblob is leading the way to an over the top tv, many will surely follow, in my opinion if a big player like Sony or Samsung will adopt this openness, they will surely win.

[baconstang]

They need a clue more than an "Open Sony". Trying to market hardware like that and software, AND taking care of your intellectual property is an inherently difficult, if not impossible, task.

And aren't these the bozos that tried to install a rootkit if you put one of their CDs in your PC? Clueless!

[Synthmeister]

I thot the exact same thing when I read that article. Sony could have been open years ago! Also, Howard Stringer said some things that make me think he doesn't realize that Apple has eliminated DRM from their iTunes store. He's in for a rude awakening if that's true. Right now, being "open" doesn't give you a huge advantage, since both Apple and Amazon are already selling DRM-free music.
With the iPod touch and iPhone and App store, Apple has a whole mobile platform ready to explode in the next 5 to 10 years and they are still feeding off the iTunes music, movies and TV shows that got the ball rolling with the iPod, only now the app store has added a second exponential growth engine.

[jtoy007]

The only part I find funny is that apple isn't open anything. They are still a very active proprietary company. Further proof is the resistance raised when another company took the o/s and the new hardware that has been opened up by apple shifting to intel based processors to run its system, and going after the company and forcing it to stop all sells. If it was a truely open system then it would be open for use on all platforms, able to be editted by all users, and able to be owned with little to no price to purchase. I understand that in order to receive support and further upgrades a price must be added to the product for such services. But at the moment neither Apple nor Sony are open in the least bit on anything that either company does.

Apple has done a great job of marketing itself as an open source company, and getting its fan club to back them with it. In the end Apple beats Sony because the ppl that buy apple love the company for no other reason then its apple. They are fully devoted to it, and would never even blink to think about another possibility it will always be apple first. Sony on the other had does not have the same reputation and will lose the battle just off followership. It must make a product that wins and reinovates in order for it to succeed, just like most of the other large business out there now aday.

[CreativeMalcolm]

It would have also helped if Sony would have had good products. Fact is their divisions seem entirely separate from each other for the most part. They seem to have a lot of the problems Microsoft has. Instead of asking how can our products build upon each other, they think how can we rope customers into buying all our products. Look at Apple, you can get an iPhone, an AirPort Express, an iPod, a MacBook an Apple TV, and nearly any other product they sell and it'll work just fine by itself but it'll work great with their other products.

[Perry_Clease]

"It would have also helped if Sony would have had good products"

I have lost a lot of faith in Sony products over the last few years. My mother bought a Sony radio, CD, alarm clock, nice looking device. However, it is incredibly complicated to set and program the alarms. It is like the project manager told the engineers to give it the most frustrating and difficult to use interface as possible. Not to mention that the same engineers probably wrote the manual which has grayish 8 point type on cheap off-white paper.

[FellowConspirator]

Hear! Hear! Sony used to make some very good products, but much of their stuff is really cheap crap today. Their computers are either stylish, or functional, but never both. They use Windows, which I can't argue with because there's a market for it, but they bugger it with poor drivers, DRM schemes, and zany Sony value-adds that screw with the boilerplate software everyone expects on their machine.

Sony takes really cheap hardware, and poor-to-mediocre software, and does its best to dress it up. I'm thinking that Stringer has formed that same opinion of Apple and their products. In fact, Apple makes very shrewd technical and financial choices in their designs, are sticklers for form AND function, and, more importantly, own their platform soup to nuts. Apple's secret is that they're a software shop first, hardware shop second, and not at all a media company. Sony couldn't have been Apple because they have never wanted to be Apple. For Sony it's: make device, create content, buy software, modify software to lock-down hardware and content.

[solis852]

Okay let's not go too far. Sony does have some good products like the PSP. Their problem is trying to keep their compony closed to developers. I Sony had allowed homebrew to run on the psp they would have much more units and would have meade more money. They should follow Apple example with the iphone/ipod touch and the app store.

[rtripathi]

After their rootkit episode, I stopped buying Sony products.

[baconstang]

Likewise.

[t8]

Yeah that certainly turned a lot of the IT savvy off Sony. The type of people that get asked what is the best product for this or that.

[ewelch]

And if it had wings, a frog wouldn't bump his butt when he hopped.

[nodash]

This article make me think of this video: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of

Warning: bad language

[frankz00]

Short answer: NO!

[terminalblue]

no.

[stevicus]

A little history as I remember it. When the iPod came out, Sony was still pushing the MD player, specifically the NetMD player which finally allowed you to connect to a computer instead of a DC player Before this, you had to use an optical cable, which only allowed realtime encoding. PCs in homes in Japan happened slowly - handheld devices were (and still) are widely used to access the net.

What Stringer is probably referring to is the decision (made by the former CEO who, along with his pet robot, got ousted in favor of Stringer) to stick with their proprietary ATRAC codec.

He is probably lamenting that the bozos before him didn't go with mp3 - yeah there have been patent and licensing issues with mp3, but it was and still is wide spread. Sony had the lead on the device side but dropped the ball on the software side by being late and proprietary.

Having been in and out of Japan and having used MD players, I tend to agree with Stringer.

[photog_7]

You are correct about ATRAC not being a good idea in hindsight, but how were they to know they would lose out to MP3 and even AAC? Going with AAC didn't hurt Apple. Of course they do offer the MP3 format as an option. After ripping everything I own in MP3 at 256, I went back and ripped it all again in AAC, which has better sound at any given bit rate. I'm happy with AAC because of the higher sound quality. I think that MP3, AAC and WMA are all here to stay, so there appear to be three winners and one loser--Sony, which went with ATRAC.

[stevicus]

@ photog

The winners have foresight, the losers don't :)

But seriously, I was using itunes on a sawtooth G4 when my sony MD player quit on me. Having realized how much better it was to manage the music with the computer, I looked into the NetMD players available at the time - this was pre-ipod days and much of my music was on MD. The whole reason I didn't buy it was ATRAC. Seemed like a no-brainer, but guess it wasn't so obvious to Sony.

Sony's worldwide success with the walkman was due to watching what the Japanese market wanted and sending that abroad.

Sony's downfall came because they continued to watch the Japanese market while the rest of the world moved to home computer based solutions and then the ipod.

sucks huh...

[David Turner]

The big problem with ATRAC wasn't ATRAC but the way sony handled it.

It saw ATRAC as its format thus you could only play it if you had sony software. No one else supported it and while iTunes was a little bit like this Apple gave iTunes away to anyone that wanted to use it.

The only way you could access ATRAC was if you had bought sony hardware which automatically limited its appeal

[sting7k]

"Hindsight is 20/20", exactly what I was going to say as soon as I saw the headline. It's not that Sony wasn't "open" it's that they wanted everyone to use THEIR media, codecs, discs, formats, systems, players, etc. that worked with nothing but Sony equipment.

[dcmichie]

Sony's just trying to stay relevant. They don't have any successful products currently. Every asset of Sony is doing bad.

[seven7dust]

Sony is a has been company
I'd rather put my money on panasonic or samsung

[MARS2025]

Yeah right Sony......make lame excuses. Hey you know what???? If I had purchased google stock in the early 90's I might own the Dallas Mavs instead of Mark Cuban. get the fudge outta here!

[masajo928]

Sony really sucks...

Well you have a company president that only know media business not IT.

You can't even use Sony products within Sony... Look at location free for a example.... You can't see it using PS3 because sony wants you to buy PSP and hook it up to a TV... And the only reason they made it work on the PSP because the Tablet Screen version didn't sell...

And don't get me started on the PS3 I bought... You can only message and teleconference with only PS3 users... Why can't they put Skype at least on it? The Blu-ray, I can't tell much difference between Blu-ray and DVD if I use HDMI with both of them. I don't have a xbox but I wish I did now... At least you can chat with people on the PC, cellphone, and Mac.

There is more thing to complain about but it'll take too long to write...

Anyways, I also agree with the complains from other comments....

This company is a scam. I really hope this company goes bankrupt...

[make_or_break]

Isn't this a bit like closing the barn door AFTER all the cows have already escaped? Mocking applause for the lip service, Sony, though that's all it'll ever be at this point. Sony lost their chance at being THE mover a long time ago; they never had the creativity and marketing guile to see how the marketplace had changing. And now that they're playing catch-up in virtually ALL of the markets that they compete in, it's hard to see how such a sloth of an enterprise will ever be nimble enough to regain any sort of resemblance of a leadership position.

I said it to the scoffers and Sony fanboys here on CNET a long time ago when Sony continued to peddle their ATRAC DRM scheme after moving into the flash-based MP3 market, despite the absolute dominance of both Apple's FairPlay and MSFT's PlaysForSure. Then I called Sony a fool for wasting resources and sticking with a proprietary system that NO ONE ELSE would be able to use, let alone want. The fanboys couldn't see past the DRM...it was 'Sony', they beloved company; the makers of the PS2 couldn't possibly do wrong. Then less than a year after my comments Sony tucked its fat, obese tail and jumped on the PlaysForSure bandwagon as their digital ATRAC-infested MP3 device sales were virtually non-existent. On top of that came the rootkit fiasco to nearly sealed the deal for Sony and MP3: minor-league, bit player. And it seemed so infectious....the mess that was the PS3 launch appeared endemic within Sony, as was Samsung's tremendous gains in the TV marketplace and Sony's failing market share in other consumer electronics like camcorders. Even their e-reader has been the flop, despite being the first big name unit and supporting e-bookstore to market. And of course there's their flailing CD sales. At least their Blu-ray sales seem to be taking hold...but for how long? People still want a seamless, pain-free online delivery model for their media content; it's only a matter of time that HD bandwidth speeds will be able to contend if not surpass the fuss of obtaining hard media, and it'll be the CD downfall all over again.

Big corporations are run by people with equally big egos. Sony's no different. They thought (and probably still think) that because they're "SONY" that the world will indeed come to them. Yet with their red ink it's clear that this mindset is very wrong; it's NOT working. The trick as always been to be quick (or lucky) enough to see the problems and get the solutions better and faster than anyone else. Right now Apple does that better than anyone else. Sony's probably still befuddled at how a COMPUTER company could beat everyone else--especially Sony--at its own game: audio. They're still too entrenched in old-school thinking to be able to match Apple, let alone beat them especially now that it's clear that Apple is far more than just a computer company. Sony now preaches 'open' only because nothing else has worked. As long as they continue in this way as reactionary, they will always be the follower and never again be the leader at anything.

Shame too, because they do make some pretty nice PMPs.

[swiggins]

Sony can't Nintendo, MS or Sony of old right now.... jesus, every time they open their mouths and this cockiness comes out I like them less and less. Concentrate on what your doing and don't try and take on another fight when your losing so many right now at the moment.

[Specialkbm]

The problem with sony has never been there products or there technology it has always been that they want to completely dictate what there product does instead of following what there customers want. They had an IPOD killer (the PSP) but miss the boat. If they would have scraped the UMD drive and opted for flash memory (better yet a harddrive) with a game download modle they could have made a game/ music download service they would have been light years ahead of Apple now.

[t8]

That is true. Proprietary memory sticks and the like just turn you off and hopefully the "world is stupid and will buy into our proprietary ecosystem" attitude hurts Sony more than anything else.

[mgheff]

Apple will always be better than Sony IMO

[maneeshpan1]

Sony's decision to use only closed proprietary DRM infected systems has personally turned me off from using their products. I do not use any Sony technologies be it Play Station, Blu Ray etc -- their using closed systems is just part of the problem -- in doing so and by adding DRM their willingess to treat consumers like criminals has led me to decide to not be a Sony customer in the future.

I will not buy from Sony until they treat customers with respect. Yes piracy does exist but they are driving honest potential customers to piracy. I once read an article saying the real winner in the HD DVD vs Blu Ray format war (back before Blu Ray won over HD DVD) was Piracy TM.

I will not buy a product unless my fair use is acknowledged and respected by the copyright holder. For the same reason I now avoid buying on Apple's iTunes Storeany DRMed media.

Sony has damaged their reputation in recent years -- they're just as bad as Microsoft in the ethics department and treat consumers badly and use closed systems to discourage partnerships among competitors.

One thing that was nice about Microosft's approach to digital media is allowing different digital media stoores to integrate with Windows Media Player and allow different devices to work with the player --something not allowed by Apple in their iTunes/iPod model but the Windows Media model's ease of use and interface was still not as good as iTunes which is why iPods still command a lot of market share even as their market share growth is saturating.

Sony also uses a closed system for its products and I won't use Sony technology. I now prefer Linux systems -- Linux = freedom for the consumer.