Sony Gets Serious About Taking On Apple

Ars Technica reports: Perhaps stirred by Apple's claim of being one of the biggest mobile device companies in the world, Sony is planning a number of new devices and services to compete with Apple's iTunes Store, iPhone, and iPad.

That strategy will revolve around what's currently being called Sony Online Service, along with smartphone and tablet-like devices meant to connect to it, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Sony plans to launch its online media platform, aimed squarely at Apple's iTunes Store, later this month. The iTunes Store includes the App Store (which offers apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad) and iBookstore (which will offer books for the iPad later this month) in addition to music, TV, and movies. Sony Online Service is expected to offer much of the same music and video content, as well as Sony's back-catalog of PlayStation games.

Sony aims to enable a number of devices to connect to the service. The company is planning to make a smartphone capable of playing games made for the PSP Go—a sort of iPhone-like "PSP phone." A project is also underway to build a mobile device that "blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PSP," according to the Journal's sources. That sure sounds like an iPad to us. Other Sony Ericsson phones may also have access to the content, and it would presumably be accessible via the company's Vaio line of laptops as well.

The initiative is part of CEO Howard Stringer's plan to turn the company around after the recession and slow sales triggered job cuts and plant closings at the end of 2008. Since then, sales of the company's mobile devices, such as the PSP Go and Sony Ericsson mobile phones, have been dismal at best. Even a major price cut on the Playstation 3 lead to only a temporary spike in sales.

Sony needs new products that can move in significant numbers if Stringer's plan to tie products into its online media service is to succeed. "It's still not quite clear what specific steps Sony will take to achieve that, especially when iPad and other highly capable mobile devices are crowding the market," Nobuo Kurahashi, a consumer-electronics analyst at Japanese brokerage Mizuho Investors Securities, told WSJ.

Though the PSP Go's high price tag and confounding issues with the download-only games have resulted in poor sales, the company has reportedly learned its lesson about how to develop products that rely on a download-only service (we'll remain skeptical). Sony has hundreds of products spread across camcorders, digital cameras, video games, and A/V equipment, but a laser sharp focus on a smaller range of products—a strategy that has served Apple well—may be the only way to turn the ship around.