Tuesday, June 1, 2004
Some Thoughts on Sony Exiting the Market...
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THE COMPETITION" @ 08:00 AM
Sony doesn't exit markets lightly, so this is a very significant statement for them to cede a market to the competition. I've always been impressed by their hardware and industrial design, so I mourn the loss of them as a competitor in this space. The UX50 is an impressive device from a hardware standpoint, and I believe it's partially what drove Microsoft to adopt a square-screen resolution and clamshell devices with keyboards as possibilities for their OEMs. This means it's up to palmOne to keep the Pocket PC OEMs on their toes in the design department. Think they're up to it? I have my doubts...
It's funny how things change - a year or two ago I was predicting that Sony would buy Palm and kill off the other Palm OS licensees and the only Palm OS devices on the market would be running on Sony hardware. Instead, we have a complete reversal - the only significant Palm OS devices are now going to be made by palmOne (now that they've acquired Handspring). Garmin is a niche player. BargainPDA seems to think that Sony will be back, but I'm not so sure. I think they develop their mobile gaming devices to have PIM features, but not much else. I don't expect to see Sony back to doing a pure-play PDA, ever.
UPDATE: I was reading a Canalys report that came in this morning, and they had this to say about Sony:
"Among the top 10 worldwide vendors, Sony has probably suffered the most from the decline in the North American handheld market, which accounts for the vast majority of its CLIÉ business, with shipments almost halving year-on-year. "Being very consumer focused, Sony's handheld business hasn't really benefited much from the general upturn in business mobility spending, while at the same time what were once distinguishing features, such as integrated cameras and MP3 playback, have appeared on more devices, including mobile phones, from other vendors," Lashford added."
Seems to reinforce what we're seeing with Sony now, doesn't it?
It's funny how things change - a year or two ago I was predicting that Sony would buy Palm and kill off the other Palm OS licensees and the only Palm OS devices on the market would be running on Sony hardware. Instead, we have a complete reversal - the only significant Palm OS devices are now going to be made by palmOne (now that they've acquired Handspring). Garmin is a niche player. BargainPDA seems to think that Sony will be back, but I'm not so sure. I think they develop their mobile gaming devices to have PIM features, but not much else. I don't expect to see Sony back to doing a pure-play PDA, ever.
UPDATE: I was reading a Canalys report that came in this morning, and they had this to say about Sony:
"Among the top 10 worldwide vendors, Sony has probably suffered the most from the decline in the North American handheld market, which accounts for the vast majority of its CLIÉ business, with shipments almost halving year-on-year. "Being very consumer focused, Sony's handheld business hasn't really benefited much from the general upturn in business mobility spending, while at the same time what were once distinguishing features, such as integrated cameras and MP3 playback, have appeared on more devices, including mobile phones, from other vendors," Lashford added."
Seems to reinforce what we're seeing with Sony now, doesn't it?
