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Sony, Walkmans And The iPod
yootje writes "A long story about Sony, and how Sony developed: from the first walkman, until the latest competition against the iPod. "
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I can't think whether the price for a Sony portable music player to compete with the iPod would be higher or lower, seeing that both Sony and Apple sell products the public sees as "premium". Considering that most of Sony's music products are priced high just for the name, they'll have to make competitive pricing for such a product focused point in order to beat Apple at this game.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Though I said that when they introduced the Playstation, and look how that turned out...
Regardless, there are dozens of players on the mark with more features than Apple's. It's subjective, but I think many of them look better and are easier to use. The far majority of them are much cheaper. Despite all this, the iPod dominates the market.
It's a style thing, and fasion has great turnover. The iPod will be forgotten at some point, just as I threw out my last poncho the other day. The way Sony will prove me wrong again will probably be in its marketing. I'm sure they can throw together a better campaign than Apple with their greater resources.
No, but the iPod is the one that they, and just about every other hard drive mp3 player, are in competition with.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
I really don't think that Sony will be able to compete with the iPod. iPods already have a reputation of being the best of their kind. Unless Sony's model is significantly cheaper or better, people won't buy it.
Where Apple scored was in getting ALL the major companies to go for ITMS.
I SINCERELY doubt that Sony will engage in industry-wide marketing with the other majors.
Now, if only the ITMS would serve as a outlet for the Indies as well...
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The Walkman quite possibly defined audio in the 1980s, but Sony seem to have forgotten that this wonderful device that made them tonnes of cash was built around a format invented by someone else; Philip's audio cassette tape.
You would really have expected Sony to have capitalised on both a) the popularity of MP3s and b) the popularity of their brand. But no - we're stuck with ATRAC - and unfortunately, it looks like they accidentally took a leaf from the Betamax manual. When are they going to learn?
I'm sure Son'y brilliant engineers can come up with an iPod-a-like which will work well and sell well, but I din't think thye'll beat the iPod.
Early to the market is a big gain, as is having developed a highly usable product, both of these are on Apple's side. Furthermore, the kind of buyers who buy iPods probably understand the benefits of open standards - Mp3 and AAC against Sony's proprietary ATRAC system, even if they don't already have Mp3 collections. Sony stands for lock-in. Customers rarely take well to that
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Sony has a history of blowing it's competition away, or at least putting them in check, but this format will hurt them bad. Why couldn't they include mp3 and AAC support to encourage people to switch? I suppose they'll include a convenient utility that will search for all your mp3s and convert them for you, and prevent you from using anyone else's player.
This device has more in common with a minidisc player than an iPod, it seems. Right now I use a two-year-old md player, and it's okay. It's no iPod, but it only cost about $100 back when I bought it.
Pros: Excellent battery life (up to 40 hours); separation of device and media (the discs); uses one standard AA battery; cheap.
Cons: Everything else... the sound quality of ATRAC doesn't really matter to me, but the process of converting CDs and MP3s is bullshit. Sony's loader programs suck. And it doesn't help that they won't support Mac OS X.
Now, consider this new Sony Walkman thing; it appears to have lost 3/4 of the pros of the md player (as above). So there's no way in hell that I would buy it. I think I'll wait until Sony's new "Hi-MD" players come down in price. These are md players that can record 45 hours of music or 1 GB of data on one disc.
For one, Sony has years more experience making consumer electronics than Apple. They already know all the inds and outs of usable design.
For two, Sony is huge enough that they can drive the whole market themselves. (Sony is a much larger company than Apple), especially in this area. I mean, think about it:
- Sony already has its own music store
- Sony already has its own removable media, that is cross-compatable with every Sony device
- Sony already has inroads into the home theatre market and portable gaming market
Look at it this way - Sony could release a device, right now, that would be as sleek as the iPod, cost less, have automatic hooks into its music store, and not only has an onboard HD but accepts SOny Memory Sticks, so you can download songs directly from Sony Connect into your Walkman, then copy them over to your Clie or PSP with 0 effort.
And they could do all this significantly cheaper than an iPod because Sony could in theory sell the Walkman as a *loss leader* to market it's music. Apple can't do this, since they are not a music publisher like Sony so they sell the music as a loss leader to sell hardware.
Besides - what if Sony just decided all its music on all its labels was no longer allowed to be sold at iTMS? Bye bye iPod.
The walkman succeeded due to copyright violation, and what many would consider fair use. Sure we sometimes bought the tape, but often we would just buy vinyl. Then we would buy cheap blank tapes and copy the album to use on the Walkman. If someone else had a copy, then we would make a copy. Of course even the cheap blank tapes were expensive, which made it hard to have money for the records, which made us copy other peoples albums. We certainly would have had no money for a walkman if we had to buy the recorded tape and vinyl for every album we wanted. It was also cool to trade the home recorded tapes.
Now Sony, like all labels, are obsessed with making every conceivable penny out of every recording. There is no longer the freedom to say that we will make some money here, some money there, and, overall we, will be fuckin' rich men.
This is why Apple has the popular media player and no one else does. It is not just design. It is that they are doing exactly what Sony did. Create a really great product without worrying about the consequences. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about working at, i think, GE. One of the managers had the buggy whip cartoon on the door. You know, the one where the buggy whip manufacturer are lamenting declining sales. Vonnegut noted that GE did not realize that in many respects they were the buggy whip people.
Certainly the horseless carriage manufacturers did not worry about the buggy whip people. I am sure the buggy whip people would have like to sure the new fangled technology out of existence. I doubt that the Sony executives would want to travel to work in a horse drawn carriage.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Look at the advertising budget for the iPod.
Ease-of-use is subjective, but as another poster pointed out, someone who has never seen an iPod before can figure out all its functions within five minutes. Ease-of-use goes beyond the device itself, and to the methods of interacting with the device, and that's where the iPod shines brighter than any other portable music solution. The integration with iTunes and the use of a fast firewire connection makes the iPod really plug and play: one can organize the tunes on a Dell desktop or Powerbook, plug in the iPod and have it work.
At the same time, the chief feature, to me anyway, is portablility, and the iPod (and now the mini) have the best combination of small size and large capacity.
When you say the iPod is only a fasion statement, I think you're wrong. It's a beautiful device, sure, and that's a plus, but it's also simply the best.
The iPod will be forgotten at some point, just as I threw out my last poncho the other day.
Agreed. The day is coming when small, hard-drive based players become commoditized. But then again, I thought it would already be here, and yet years after its introduction the iPod continues to dominate. At least until after Christmas, I see no serious competitors, which brings me to the last point.
The way Sony will prove me wrong again will probably be in its marketing. I'm sure they can throw together a better campaign than Apple with their greater resources.
Maybe. But Sony's device comes late to the market and offers no real technical advantages over the iPod. In fact, it offers technical disadvantages because it only accepts Sony's Atrac (I'm not sure about the capitalization) format. That means anyone who wants to use it must wait for their music to be converted to an inferior format that will further reduce sound quality. Anyone who asks me whether they should buy a Sony portable music device will get a resounding "NO!" I suspect Sony's player will get drowned out by other competitors like Dell and Creative. Sony's efforts don't always pan out: consider the Mini-Disk. I think this will merely be another one.
Still, I agree with your header, because I don't think Sony stands a chance either.
Disclaimer: I don't own an iPod and will not until/unless Apple offers Ogg Vorbis support. That being said, I recognize that I'm in the minority, and I understand why other people buy them, which is why I posted the above.
How much would Frauhoffer charge? 50 cents? A couple bucks the most? That's a very bad excuse for a $200 to $500 player.
If my SonyEricsson cell phone played mp3s we might be in business.
You can already buy Sony Ericssons that play MP3s off of memory sticks. Just check ebay.
These proprietary standards are reuining what would otherwise be a very competative lineup of products.
The best thing about memory sticks is not that its standard - its that it is a *Sony* standard. If you have a SOny device, it supports memory stick. You don't have to go around guessing. And they have so many devices - TVs, recievers, stereos, PDAs, laptops, MP3 players, cell phones - all excellent quality and memory stick works with all of them. And you can bet when the PSP comes out, and the PS3 is out, memory stick will be the sotrage medium for those too.
This is how Sony locks you in - they make so many great devices, yo uare bound to buy one of them. Then you say "well, I already have a PSP and it takes memory sticks - if I get an Ericsson then they can share the media", etc etc and on it goes.
Only a moment's thought should reveal that this must be true. Skimming the linked article doesn't reveal any such connection. Sigh.
All the music players Sony releases use their weird compression method which requires converting MP3s to their own format. Think about why this is, and consider how much money Sony makes selling music and movies.
Or, I listened to the songs so many times on the radio and listened to the commercials so many times that I own the right to have a copy of the song by having listened to the hundreds of radio commercials.
That's an interesting justification - but that is all it really is, a convoluted justification. You are stealing. You may not agree with the laws that define it as such, but that is what you are doing.
More importantly though is the fact that the artist, whose music you enjoy, does not see a dime, from either you, or the commercials which you use as your primary justification. They are the ones who are hurt the most, by both the RIAA and people who twist logic to justify taking music.
If you want to steal music by ripping CDs from the library, fine. But quit using rationalization to apply a salve to your conscience. Accept what you do for what it is.
Download my free songs!
The big difference between Sony and its mp3 player competition like Apple, Rio, etc... is that Sony is a music label. These other companies don't have to worry about upholding copyrights on music they've created.