Turning 30 ain’t easy. It’s a time for reflection that leads one to ask the inevitable, are the best days behind you or yet to come? This Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Walkman and it seems only fitting to ask that question of Sony.
The company certainly has its work cut out for it after reporting a $1B loss for the year. And the challenges for Sir Howard appear nothing short of staggering.
But I still believe Sony could stage a major comeback and surprise us all.
Not by way of the massive cost reductions underway (i.e. plant closings, layoffs, slashing of suppliers, selling off of non-core assets). Not by lowering the price of the PS3. And not with the next Spiderman release. Those are all critical items to be certain, but what the ailing king of consumer electronics really needs to do is inspire.
To that end, there is news that Sony may finally be adding a phone to its PSP gaming system. A truly inspired combination would not simply play catch-up with the iPhone. Without a doubt, the iPhone has shown us what’s possible when you combine today’s computing capabilities with easy-to-use hard and soft interfaces and deliver it in a pocket-sized form factor. But the future for smartphones lies not just in bringing today’s capabilities to the pocket, but in going well beyond existing models and expectations. Tomorrow’s smartphones will…
- Transform location-based services from novelty to necessity,
- Commercialize near field communication,
- Bring augmented reality to life, and
- Usher in the age of the Semantic Web and smart agents
This is where Sony should be setting its sights. And given the company’s success in commercializing other forward-looking mobile technologies (e.g. FeliCa), it’s not without precedent.
In the meantime, there’s plenty of pedestrian issues for Sony’s new team to consider when it comes to the shortcomings of today’s smartphones including: poor voice quality/coverage (Sony could extend its partnership with Skype and incorporate a femtocell solution such as Verizon’s Wireless Network Extender as a PSP accessory), poor battery life (Sony doesn’t have the greatest reputation when it comes to batteries to say the least and the PSP Go’s battery life doesn’t look great either. time to outsource?), small screens (adding one of Sony’s an “awe-inspiring” OLEDs is a no-brainer), low-quality cameras (Sony’s Cyber-shot line is highly competitive), and slow mobile broadband (partnering with Verizon could allow Sony to take advantage of their plans to launch LTE in 2010), to name a few.
Further, as smartphones become computers in our pockets, consumers will come to expect their interactions to be as fast as real computers. Even the latest and greatest still have a ways to go in meeting those expectations. Apple has already signaled their intentions to invest heavily in this endeavor with last year’s acquisition of P.A. Semi, and rumors already abound that next year’s iPhone could see the first multi-core processor. Sony is no slouch in this department and could easily repurpose investments in their advanced Cell processor, originally created for the PS3, to do the same for the PSP.
Developer fatigue is yet another issue Sony must examine. Launching a mobile app store and SDK has been a kind of field of dreams (build it and they will come) for many handset manufactures and carriers alike. Can Sony rally developers to help them build their own 50,000 app store? The company certainly has extraordinary reach and distribution to offer. The PSP has sold over 51M units (the PS3 over 22M units).
Lastly the issue of pricing. Plain and simple, Apple changed everything with the $99 price point and some see a free iPhone within a year. Any new entrant will have to come to terms with this new reality.
Of course even the iPhone has issues: lack of multitasking (something Palm has been highly praised for addressing), the hassle of syncing (again, see Palm), lack of Flash support (the “real Web” is one that supports de facto standards), no visible message notification (what exactly is Apple’s aversion to a LED indicator?), and difficulty in discovering new apps in a large and growing catalog (anyone heard of personalization?).
There are plenty of things Sony can do to not only address the shortcomings of competing mobile devices but to inspire once again.
The best may be yet to come.
