Sony just don’t get it

[Plekhanov]

Reuters

Sony to launch rival iPod
Thu 1 July, 2004 12:36

By Bernhard Warner

LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony is launching a Walkman digital music player capable of storing far more songs than Apple Computer market-leading iPod, while also undercutting iPod's price.

The Japanese consumer electronics maker says the 20-gigabyte device, which is its second hard-disk drive gadget aimed at unseating Apple and can store 13,000 songs, will be launched on July 10 in Japan, by mid-August in the United States and in September in Europe.

Dubbed the Network Walkman NW-HD1, it marks a major upgrade to the legendary Walkman brand and the announcement comes on the 25th anniversary of the introduction of Sony's groundbreaking portable music player -- July 1, 1979.

It is expected to sell for around 53,000 yen (270 pounds) in Japan and less than $400 (220 pounds)in the United States, Sony said, undercutting Apple's 40-gigabyte device, which sells for $499 and can hold up to 10,000 songs.

Sony said it packed more songs in a smaller storage space by using advanced compression technology.

"Sony has consistently changed the economics of the portable music player business," said Richard Dougherty, lead analyst with Envisioneering Group of Seaford, New York. "But Apple has trumped it for the past 30 months."

Because Sony uses the same 20-gigabyte hard drives across many of its product lines, including computers, it stands to benefit from massive price discounts for buying these devices in volume.

"Prices could fall by as much as 50 percent in the next 12-18 months," Dougherty said.

Sony President Kunitake Ando said at a reception to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Walkman that he was determined to take the spotlight in the market for portable music players away from iPod.

"I don't know if we can take this market back in a year ... But this launch is our message that we will work hard to put an end to the dominance by just one company," Ando said.

Sony declined to comment on sales targets. It has sold 340 million units of the Walkman over the past 25 years, including CD- and MD-based models.

ONLINE MUSIC

The latest product joins the "Vaio pocket", a digital player Sony unveiled in Japan in May. The Vaio pocket has a similar storage capacity and also carries a 53,000 yen price tag.

Sony views a high-capacity, hard-drive player as a crucial addition to its range of products in boosting usage of its online music store Sony Connect. It is hoping the cachet of the Walkman name will help it close the gap on the iPod and Apple's iTunes download service.

Since Apple launched iPod three years ago it has dominated the digital music player market, outselling all competitors by nearly a two-to-one margin. Apple has an even larger lead in downloads, selling over 85 million digital tracks.

"This very clearly completes the range for us," said Robert Ashcroft, senior vice president of Sony network services Europe, a division of Sony Electronics.

Ashcroft said Sony Connect was due to be launched in Europe next week, beginning with the French market. He said that with the NW-HD1, Sony now had over a dozen digital players compatible with Sony Connect.

Assembling a large installed base of consumers with digital music players is considered crucial to survival in the brutally competitive digital download market.

As with Sony's other players, the NW-HD1 plays songs in the company's proprietary ATRAC format only, meaning it is not compatible with other online stores and cannot play tunes in the popular MP3 format.

Sony, well-regarded by gadget lovers for its design prowess, said the NW-HD1 will be the smallest 20-GB player on the market. It is slightly larger than a credit card and 12.6 mm thick -- less than half an inch.

Sony said Toshiba Corp. developed the hard drives and the rest of the gadget was designed by Sony engineers.

The battery lasts 30 hours, at least three times longer than the iPod's -- a selling point that Sony plans to play up in promoting the device.

The NW-HD1 also employs shock-resistant technology that protects the hard drive if is dropped.

"We couldn't come up with something using the Walkman brand until it survived the 1 metre (3 ft 3.37 in) drop test," said Ashcroft.

Shares in Sony closed up 1.22 percent at 4,160 yen, outperforming the benchmark Nikkei average, which rose 0.31 percent.

When are they going to learn that most people aren’t going to choose crappy proprietary format only players when there are open source alternatives available, it’s a shame because so much of their stuff is well designed and made, even if it is expensive.

[Col. Crackpot]

wow. that should sell like ice cubes in the Yukon. in February.

[Zoink]

As long as they have a tool to put my CDs onto the thing, I don't care. I don't download stuff. But for $400 it can stay on the shelf.

[General Zod]

No mp3 format available? no .ogg or .wmv? yeah. . . . i predict this thing getting shitty reviews based on the lack of compatability with various formats. If sony had made it more comaptible in the way of file format, they could have had a decent product, but noooo. and er, shouldn't this be in G&C?

[Plekhanov]

As long as they have a tool to put my CDs onto the thing, I don't care. I don't download stuff. But for $400 it can stay on the shelf.

And you don't mind having to reconvert all the stuff you already ripped?

[Durandal]

Blah blah blah, another iPod killer. Call me when someone comes up with something original. iPod killers pop up at least once per week on /., and the geeks nut over them for a while because they can play Ogg Vorbis, declare them to be iPod killers, and then forget about them when they fail to achieve even mediocre success.

[LapsedPacifist]

You've never installed Sony audio software, have you?

LP - NetMD user

As long as they have a tool to put my CDs onto the thing, I don't care. I don't download stuff. But for $400 it can stay on the shelf.

[Durandal]

By the way, this belongs in G&C. You might want to curb that habit of posting shit in the wrong forum.

[DPDarkPrimus]

That was funny. They had me sold until they mentioned you can only play a completely unknown format.

The only other MP3 player out there right now other than an iPod that looks nice is the Lyra.

[LapsedPacifist]

That was funny. They had me sold until they mentioned you can only play a completely unknown format.

The only other MP3 player out there right now other than an iPod that looks nice is the Lyra.

I think that ATARAC is their MiniDisc format... But if you have 20gigs of space I don't know why you'd use it.

Sony's software is kinda creepily bad. If you want to have a collection of music on your computer which is moved onto a player it is "Checked out" where they muck with the files so you can't listen to those files on your computer anymore.

The way around that, and the only thing that redeems MD IMHO, is the "simple burner" software that writes from CD to the player directly without storing a copy on the computer, but I don't know if that's practical for a 20gb application.

All of my information on this stuff comes from my personal use of Sony MiniDisc products and there is always the chance they'll do something remarkably clever and better for this product.

LP

[darthdavid]

Fuck that. If i'm gonna get an over priced player i'll get an I-Pod because those don't suck penis. I mean ATRAC? Uurp. No thanks. Only thing comprably sucky would be a .WMA based player.

[Pu-239]

The Rio Karma is supposed to be good. Plays MP3, OGG, WMA, and some other formats.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I have one of Sony's Minidisc players that use the ATRAC3 format. I really don't mind at all. So the software has to convert the files while it's transfering them to the disc and you can't load them onto another computer or copy them, what's the big deal?

[LapsedPacifist]

I have one of Sony's Minidisc players that use the ATRAC3 format. I really don't mind at all. So the software has to convert the files while it's transfering them to the disc and you can't load them onto another computer or copy them, what's the big deal?

I work on computers all day. I can get a 20gb Ipod for $250. Life is too damn short to deal with Sony Software's baggage.

LP

[Plekhanov]

I have one of Sony's Minidisc players that use the ATRAC3 format. I really don't mind at all. So the software has to convert the files while it's transfering them to the disc and you can't load them onto another computer or copy them, what's the big deal?

With this player not only would you have to rip all your CDs again but you would also be locked into Sony downloads service meaning that they can charge what they like without fear of competition.

[LapsedPacifist]

15gb for $270, my mistake.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Well I didn't have the money to afford an iPod, nor did I want to spend money to support Apple by buying one of their products (plus what I wanted was more fulfilled by an MD player than an iPod).

I don't find Sony's software (SonicStage and Simple Burner) to be that much of a hassle at all, to be honest.

There may be a few problems with this player that's comming out, but I don't have any with the one I currently own.

[phongn]

When are they going to learn that most people aren’t going to choose crappy proprietary format only players when there are open source alternatives available, it’s a shame because so much of their stuff is well designed and made, even if it is expensive.

Sony may have good design, but their products are, generally speaking, poorly made.

[Plekhanov]

Well I didn't have the money to afford an iPod, nor did I want to spend money to support Apple by buying one of their products (plus what I wanted was more fulfilled by an MD player than an iPod).

I don't find Sony's software (SonicStage and Simple Burner) to be that much of a hassle at all, to be honest.

There may be a few problems with this player that's comming out, but I don't have any with the one I currently own.

Don’t sweat it, I don’t think anybodies saying that you shouldn’t have bought a minidisk player or should buy an iPod just that this new sony thing is crap. I couldn’t afford one either + I wanted to record my lectures which iPods can’t do (or at least couldn’t when I bought my last player) and I wanted a radio so I bought and Xclef.

Any way back on topic doesn’t AAC, which is Apple’s preferred format, also give smaller files than mp3? If so this would make the supposed benefits of forcing people to use ATRAC even less supportable.

[darthdavid]

Yup it does.

[phongn]

Any way back on topic doesn’t AAC, which is Apple’s preferred format, also give smaller files than mp3? If so this would make the supposed benefits of forcing people to use ATRAC even less supportable.

You should be able to get similar sound quality at a lower bitrate using AAC rather than MP3.

[Pu-239]

I have one of Sony's Minidisc players that use the ATRAC3 format. I really don't mind at all. So the software has to convert the files while it's transfering them to the disc and you can't load them onto another computer or copy them, what's the big deal?

Doesn't the conversion between mp3->ATRAC3 lose quality?

[Durandal]

I have one of Sony's Minidisc players that use the ATRAC3 format. I really don't mind at all. So the software has to convert the files while it's transfering them to the disc and you can't load them onto another computer or copy them, what's the big deal?

Doesn't the conversion between mp3->ATRAC3 lose quality?

Going from one lossy compression scheme to another one always results in a quality loss.

[LapsedPacifist]

Well I didn't have the money to afford an iPod, nor did I want to spend money to support Apple by buying one of their products (plus what I wanted was more fulfilled by an MD player than an iPod).

I don't find Sony's software (SonicStage and Simple Burner) to be that much of a hassle at all, to be honest.

There may be a few problems with this player that's comming out, but I don't have any with the one I currently own.

MD has some big advantages for me over ipod as well. Most notably given how frequently I drop my freakin' music players I don't want to spend 250+ on something. I'm just chaotic enough with my sorting of music that a selection of smaller discs works better for me than one big messy file system. And for one disc of stuff Sony's Simple Burner works pretty good.

But for the comparison of two HD based music players I think the disadvantages of the Sony software are going to be very annoying. I really didn't like the way the MD software installed on my machine and there were very few customization options for anybody to do it differently. I really don't like the "checking out" of music. I hate the icons on the desktop and I don't like the software interface.

LP

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I have one of Sony's Minidisc players that use the ATRAC3 format. I really don't mind at all. So the software has to convert the files while it's transfering them to the disc and you can't load them onto another computer or copy them, what's the big deal?

Doesn't the conversion between mp3->ATRAC3 lose quality?

I don't notice any difference using the LP2 compression setting (which fits 50+ songs on an MD: haven't tried the LP4 setting, though). As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same to my ears.