We've always had a soft spot for Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer, and it sounds like the old man's doing more than
cajoling Tom Hanks into telling jokes following his
consolidation of power: in a lengthy and illuminating interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia, Sir Howard pledged that Sony would use more open standards in the future, saying "If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple" in the music market. That's a pretty bold statement to be making in hindsight -- especially since we're pretty sure the Connect Player and SonicStage would have still driven people screaming into the arms of iTunes -- but it's pretty heartwarming to hear from the head of a company just as famous for an endless array of funky proprietary standards as it is the Walkman. You want to make us feel even warmer and fuzzier, Howie? "We can no longer say that we're right and our customers are wrong. We can't build only what we want to build." Wow -- sounds like the start of a whole new Sony. We'll see if Sir Howard can actually pull off what sounds like a major change in his company's culture, but for right now we'd recommend hitting the read link and taking in the whole interview, cause it's a good one.
posted May 11th 2009 1:52PM
Typical conflict of interest. Sony owns both movie studios and record companies. Sony also makes high end electronics both commercial and consumer. I think that they felt that they would "hurt" their other divisions by allowing an open standard for music and movies which happens to be pretty ironic considering VHS, DVD, CD and Cassette can be played on any device that supports them. They wanted control at all times because things were digital now and technology made it easier to move things around. People just wanted ease of use and Apple capitalized off that. A business model in which you sell 13 tracks for $17-$25, only liking 2 tracks was not going to last no matter how many lawsuits you bring. This cut into marketing, artist development, etc-those division/departments were mad as hell, this also opened a lane where an artist was more free to make money on their own without all the ridiculous overhead. These companies also forgot that there's not much you can really do once you "buy" a CD. You don't walk out of the store with a signed contract agreeing to whatever terms--you go home, you rip it to your computer, piss on it, toss it, tape it, put it on your mp3 player, make a copy for the car so the original does not get scratched up, etc. If Sony were more open and came up with a nice player very early on it would obviously have been a different story. Then again, a lot of other companies are saying the same thing now.
That picture looks familiar.
http://www.sijun.com/dhabih/portfolio/images/gman.jpg
Then there is Sony's crap quality as of late.
You mean having an iron fist gripped tightly around the throat of your customers wasn't the best way to go?