Once upon a time, consumers viewed Sony as a desirable brand. The company was renowned for innovation: the legendary Walkman, the groundbreaking PlayStation, Aibo, the first commercially available robotic pet.
Fast forward a few years, and things are looking grim. They now produce derivative rubbish that nobody in their right mind would want to invest in. Take the NW-HD5 for example:
It’s a poor man’s iPod that uses Sony’s proprietary format, ATRAC3. Sony helpfully bundled SonicStage with the player to encourage users to convert all their nice MP3 files into Sony’s white elephant format, leaving them with gigabytes of useless music when the player stops working. Cheers Sony!
The Bean is equally terrible:
Surely somebody within Sony must have noticed that this thing is a pig! What will they think of next? The Sony Spud – an MP3 (sorry, ATRAC3) player shaped like a potato?
Poor products and incredible errors of judgment have plagued the company in recent times: take their sluggish, wait-and-see approach in the TV market. Upon closing their south Wales manufacturing plant with the loss of 650 jobs, Sony announced:
“The demand for CRT-based televisions within the UK and Europe has fallen significantly and the transition to flat TVs has been much quicker than we first expected”
No kidding!
Their lack of foresight is astonishing for company that claims to be at the forefront of technology. They’re playing catch-up now with the Bravia range of televisions, but is it too little too late? The Bravia range may have a nice television campaign to support sales, but Sony’s competitors are offering products of similar (if not better) quality at a lower price.
The PlayStation 3 is another great example of a product that arrived too late for far too much money. The Xbox 360 currently retails at £296.96 on Amazon, or a mere £195.48 if you fancy the Core System. The PlayStation 3 comes in at a whopping £419.99! It may play Blu-Ray discs (which will be obsolete in no time as broadband speeds and on-demand services increase), wifi and a larger drive, but why bundle these things in off the bat?
The PS3 has…. what…. about 20 games? The 360 has loads (OK, so shoot me, I don’t know exactly how many).
Sony have just unveiled their latest product: a clock radio with an integrated iPod dock.
Another piggy pig pig! It is so piggy is stinks like bacon! It looks like a car battery or possibly a toaster.
The VAIO is yet another example of the derivative rubbish they’ve been peddling for far too long.
Hmmmmmm… looks suspiciously like the Apple MacBook! At least they’re priced reasonably enough.
Sony’s retail outlets are looking very tired – if you’ve walked past the one on Baker Street you’ll know what I mean.
Sony – please, go back to square one, head back to the drawing board and dream up some new, innovative, exciting products before it’s too late.
Rant over.
