You’ve cancelled nearly all your handheld devices and instead of inspiring with new and innovative gadgets, you’re busy trying to catch up with the status-quo. Your top end smartphone offering, the X10, is a cookie-cutter Android phone at best. Sure, maybe you customized the interface, but there’s nothing even unique about it. And what is the Sony Dash? It’s hardly more than a glorified alarm clock. It doesn’t even have a battery! You call it “a personal internet viewer inch. I’m pretty sure we’ve already got those; they’re called computers. People don’t want to watch YouTube videos while locked to their bedside table. They want a device that goes where they go. How about the VAIO P? It’s neat, but little more than a small and expensive laptop. Your netbook offering is boring and already being left behind as the rest of the market moves forward with ION equipped netbooks. Look at your regular sized VAIO laptops. Just look at them! You’ve got 9 different series! Sadly, they’ve lost much of their former association with quality. With so many “different inch series of VAIOs, it seems like you’re trying to be HP and not yourself.
What brought you to this lowly state? Maybe it was the economy? Maybe it was netbooks? Maybe it was the world’s attitude toward mobile.
I’m here to tell you that the world is ready. They are ready for the next innovative Sony handheld. They are ready for entertainment and productivity in their pocket. The world is ready to be inspired in this space again and it’s up to you. Apple has had the spotlight for too long.
Don’t churn out a cookie cutter tablet just because everyone else is. Don’t release an iPad wanna-be like everyone else is doing. Take your time. Get ahead of the curve. Innovate like you used to. And most of all, inspire us again. It was your amazing handhelds that sparked my interest in the world of mobile computing. It saddens me to think that someone might miss out on such inspiration because we’re living in a dark age of Sony handhelds.
Here’s some brainstorming to get your started: I’m imagining something along the lines of an Android PSP. The current PSP is great for real gaming (not casual 99 cent games like the iPhone). You’ve got the right idea with the web browser on the PSP, but it’s way outdated at this point. Design a handheld that runs Android but supports the environments that game developers are accustomed to. Keep the hardware buttons (for the love of God, don’t think that on-screen or touch controls are going to be satisfactory for real gaming) but add a capacitive touchscreen. You’ll need good performance and a higher resolution screen than the original PSP (854×480 would do nicely, and allow you to offer 16:9 movies with no cropping). Not just for gaming, but for web browsing as well and app performance. Android has already done much of the legwork for you. Access to the Android Marketplace is important, but it isn’t where you want to sell your games. Create your own market that allows users to download games that are designed for your hardware (the D-pad, four buttons, and shoulder buttons). Without a dedicated marketplace for games for this device, there will be no incentive for game developers to release games to specifically take advantage of the hardware buttons on your device and they’ll instead opt to create games that can run on any Android device and will release them through the Android Marketplace to reach a larger audience. Consider a slide up screen with a hardware keyboard underneath, or even a convertible device. A quick Google image search tells me I’m not alone with these thoughts. There’s tons of mockups out there:
We’re ready for something amazing. An innovative device that fits in the pocket and connects us to our digital lives and provides entertainment. Look to your legacy of incredible handhelds, and from them, design something that shows us the future once again.
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i would not mind seeing one of the clie designs refurbished using something a bit more recent then palmos…
I think what happened was that sony as a hardware company, and sony as a media company (remember, it owns both a movie studio and a record label) had a internal struggle. And the media part won.
+1 !
add me to this great (and so actual!) letter to Dear Papy Sony ;)
and let’s wait for Chrismas ;)
I’d like to see them update the Mylo 2, now that there are faster processors, better displays (capacitive multitouch, etc), and better operating systems available (android, maemo, maybe ubuntu remix).
I think maybe as a whole the PS3 may have hurt Sony. I think they have put a lot into it, and as I understand only with in this last year have they started to see a return.
I always thought it funny that on one hand they are fiercely competing with Microsoft in game consoles, but on the other, they produce some of the best quality Windows computers I’ve seen.
Amen to that Ben.
I can only agree with all of the previous comments. Having owned ( and still daily use) an NZ-90, a UX-280p, and a VGN-P530H, all of which I highly value for their unique fit into my lifestyle, I wish Sony would come out with a killer of a machine, fast, powerful, with all the goodies in a tablet form factor, the size of the P series or smaller (min 7″ diagonal touch screen) and for the real kick, built in CD/DVD reader/writer. Bring it in for under 1K bucks, and I will be the first to buy.