Friday, January 9, 2015

There's more than one Sony — the other is Google http://goo.gl/AmXJXu


Well, Sony has a lot more than three product categories. Take the new audiophile-focused Walkman ZX2. On one hand, it feels like a return to the old Sony spirit; let’s engineer an amazing, niche device, sell it for nearly $1,200, and see if anyone bites. But it runs 2012’s Android 4.2, and the basic interface is laggy beyond belief. I asked Xperia product marketing manager Stephen Sneeden if Sony’s mobile team had any input into the new Walkman’s design, and he said that the device was outside his purview. The ZX2 doesn’t feel like a product of One Sony; it’s a product created by one of many Sonys.


The ZX2 isn't a product of One Sony; it’s a product from one of many Sonys


The PlayStation 4 is another example. It’s an excellent, popular games console, but Sony’s woes with building out PlayStation Network have been well documented, and the company’s gaming devices still don’t interact much with other products. While there’s a rudimentary PlayStation app that lets you check your profile and takes you to a web store, and Xperia phones are starting to allow streaming from PlayStation Now, that’s about as far as it goes. A powerful $399 box connected to the TV could be the center of any product lineup, but Sony seems content to sequester it away as a curio separate from the rest of its devices. That dissonance is only going to get worse as the reliance on Google takes hold.


Sony has made efforts to unify its strategy. "When you’re a big company it’s easy to become siloed, and we’re working really hard not to be siloed and to communicate so our products work seamlessly together," says Jones, who notes that he now works in the same buildings as people from other divisions rather than having to go to another office "literally a mile away." Jones also cites examples where knowledge has been shared to improve products on a technical level; the company’s 4K TVs, for instance, use image processing technology informed by the output from its professional 4K movie cameras. "That experience of making the cameras, making the content, displaying it in 4K, helps us make a better TV," says Jones. "Because everybody else, this is their first time at the rodeo. We’ve been doing it for a while, and we can do a better job of it."



Source Article from http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/9/7522319/theres-more-than-one-sony-the-other-is-google
There's more than one Sony — the other is Google

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