Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Why The Clie Didn't Make It In The US
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "ARTICLE" @ 01:00 PM
http://www.engadget.com/entry/8828248613747783/
"Over at Brighthand, Larry Becker tries to tackle the real reasons for why Sony is ditching out of the PDA market here in the States. Their biggest mistake he says? A misunderstanding of the biggest difference between American and Japanese consumers: the Japanese actually read the manual after the buy something, whereas Americans (and we’re as guilty of this as anyone) tend to play first and ask questions later and then get frustrated if things aren't completely intuitive."
I think this played a part in Sony's exit of the PDA market in the US, and Europe I suppose, but the author doesn't comment on that. However, there were other factors as well. You know though, if this supposed complexity was the real problem, it really shoots a hole in the "Windows Mobile devices are too complex" theory as their market share has been climbing. :wink: We have known for quite sometime that that was a bogus argument.
• Sony forced people to use the Memory Stick slot, which kept you from using a wider range of SD and SDIO cards on the market. Not that most PalmOS devices can use SDIO anyway, as Sandisk will attest to in their SDIO WiFi issues. General consumers may not have understood the implications, but power users did, and power users are influencers. Irrespective of the OS, I always recommended against Sony if the user was going to be doing any advanced mobile computing, like WiFi.
• Sony burned existing customers by telling them the 128MB MS cards would grow in the future, only to replace it with MS Pro, which didn't work in existing devices.
• Sony played nasty with their proprietary implementation of the Compact Flash slot for their WiFi card, blocking the CF slot for use with dozens and dozens of cheap CF memory cards and IO devices.
• The PalmOS is so open as to create confusion. They have almost no standards compared to Windows Mobile, which causes program compatibility issues, hardware compatibility, and end user confusion. On a Pocket PC, email is Inbox, addresses are in Contacts, etc. and all of that works the same way on dozens of OEM devices. In Palm, email can be one of several email apps, or missing altogether. Addresses can be different on various device. There is no question Sony pushed the PalmOS to the limit, but only power users got it. I've seen people move from a Palm V or M515 to a newer Clie and be utterly lost on the new features, and some existing features totally different.
• PalmOS overall has lost share to Windows Mobile because of broader issues too. Full multitasking, ease of using memory cards, a plethora of CF and SD/SDIO devices that, almost universally, work on any device that has the right slot. The iPAQ 2215 and Dell Axim X5 use the same driver for the Socket WiFi card for example, as do any other CF enabled device. The only caveat is the operating system version. Sony was the trailing PalmOS maker, and their decline was sufficient to have Sony just walk away.
It isn't any one thing, or maybe not even two or three things, but the things listed above, the finances of it (no one thinks Sony ever made a penny off of any individual Clie model) and perhaps a few things I missed led to their exit.
"Over at Brighthand, Larry Becker tries to tackle the real reasons for why Sony is ditching out of the PDA market here in the States. Their biggest mistake he says? A misunderstanding of the biggest difference between American and Japanese consumers: the Japanese actually read the manual after the buy something, whereas Americans (and we’re as guilty of this as anyone) tend to play first and ask questions later and then get frustrated if things aren't completely intuitive."
I think this played a part in Sony's exit of the PDA market in the US, and Europe I suppose, but the author doesn't comment on that. However, there were other factors as well. You know though, if this supposed complexity was the real problem, it really shoots a hole in the "Windows Mobile devices are too complex" theory as their market share has been climbing. :wink: We have known for quite sometime that that was a bogus argument.
• Sony forced people to use the Memory Stick slot, which kept you from using a wider range of SD and SDIO cards on the market. Not that most PalmOS devices can use SDIO anyway, as Sandisk will attest to in their SDIO WiFi issues. General consumers may not have understood the implications, but power users did, and power users are influencers. Irrespective of the OS, I always recommended against Sony if the user was going to be doing any advanced mobile computing, like WiFi.
• Sony burned existing customers by telling them the 128MB MS cards would grow in the future, only to replace it with MS Pro, which didn't work in existing devices.
• Sony played nasty with their proprietary implementation of the Compact Flash slot for their WiFi card, blocking the CF slot for use with dozens and dozens of cheap CF memory cards and IO devices.
• The PalmOS is so open as to create confusion. They have almost no standards compared to Windows Mobile, which causes program compatibility issues, hardware compatibility, and end user confusion. On a Pocket PC, email is Inbox, addresses are in Contacts, etc. and all of that works the same way on dozens of OEM devices. In Palm, email can be one of several email apps, or missing altogether. Addresses can be different on various device. There is no question Sony pushed the PalmOS to the limit, but only power users got it. I've seen people move from a Palm V or M515 to a newer Clie and be utterly lost on the new features, and some existing features totally different.
• PalmOS overall has lost share to Windows Mobile because of broader issues too. Full multitasking, ease of using memory cards, a plethora of CF and SD/SDIO devices that, almost universally, work on any device that has the right slot. The iPAQ 2215 and Dell Axim X5 use the same driver for the Socket WiFi card for example, as do any other CF enabled device. The only caveat is the operating system version. Sony was the trailing PalmOS maker, and their decline was sufficient to have Sony just walk away.
It isn't any one thing, or maybe not even two or three things, but the things listed above, the finances of it (no one thinks Sony ever made a penny off of any individual Clie model) and perhaps a few things I missed led to their exit.
