March 16, 2005
what’s the sony story?
Good article from The New York Times:
How the iPod Ran Circles Around the Walkman
“SYNERGY AND OTHER LIES” would be a good first reading assignment for Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s new chief executive, to be followed by “The Synergy Myth.” Then Sir Howard should recognize that the Sony he inherits is constitutionally incapable of making one (electronics) plus one (entertainment) equal three.
…
Sir Howard now presides over a company that appears — superficially — to be the polar opposite of an ITT-like conglomeration of unrelated businesses. Sony is accustomed to thinking of itself as consisting of two well-matched halves: electronics and entertainment. At the Consumer Electronics Show last month, Sir Howard observed, “A device without content is nothing but scrap metal,” a platitude beneath mention — unless, perhaps, one were a mite defensive about owning both a widget factory and an entertainment factory.
“A device without content is nothing but scrap metal.” Bad argument. It’s like Ford buying the State of Oregon. “A car without a destination is nothing but scrap metal.”
So what business are Sony actually in? I’m confused. What’s important to them? I have no idea. Do any of them own blogs worth talking about? I don’t know of any.
A company doesn’t need “synergy”. A company needs a cause.
What’s the Sony story? They don’t seem to have one, except for “We make lots of stuff we want you to buy.”
Is that a story they actually want to tell? A story they want to spend x-zillion on advertising in order to get across? Seriously.
But if Sony does indeed have a story, please do let me know what it is. I’m curious now.
I’m not so sure that “A car without a destination is nothing but scrap metal.” is the correct analogy. Its more like “A car without petrol (gas) isn’t going anywhere”.
But does that mean that Ford should buy Shell? If they did you could be sure that new business models would emerge. Buy the gas and get the car free!
Fact is that the entertainment division would like to lock down the walkman device so that it cannot play illegal content, and the public doesn’t want less for more.
It’s probably a breach of etiquette to mention my own rantings, but a more general take on this whole digital convergence thing is here…
http://hnewlands.typepad.com/cardboard_spaceship/2005/03/would_you_like_.html
This states my views on some of the issues that are causing Sony and others not only to drop the ball, but potential seriously fuck everything else up into the bargain. It’s like watching the buggy whip industry getting a whip made mandatory for every car.
I always thought Sony Electronics’ cause was “super cool electronics”. With their new cause being “super cool high-end electronics” (their new Qualia(sp?) line is awesome). I guess it gets muddled quite nicely with the augment of their entertainment business — but such is the life of a multi-billion dollar mega-corp, and hence the chat about synergy.
How could Sony even begin to present a cause/story, when their cause is innately so split amongst so many businesses and people?
I think some dev process blogs would be a really neat thing to see from them, especially from their design teams.
Now — if I’m reading in to your post incorrectly, let me know — but by story telling, I assume you’re looking for something personal/storyish/blogish in nature coming out of Sony. What did you want to see?
That’s definately not a “challenge” in any way — I think it’s a really hard question. Just curious on your thoughts for the big corps. I end up agreeing with sentiments like yours, but it’s not clear to me what gigantic organizations should do to fix their situation, save becoming smaller
sony’s story was: make it smaller and nicer!
hardware:
tape recorder –> walkman
cd player –> discman –> md player
hifi rack –> hifi mini-system (all in one)
cam –> compact cam
vhs video cam –> camcorder
laptop –> vaio computers
“software”:
vinyl disc –> cd –> md
tape –> dat
vhs –> super8 –> …
but you’re right, that’s the past.. and i can’t see a sony-story today!
A. Casalena, what do I want to see?
I just want to see something, anything, interesting, coherent and resonant.
“Synergy” is about a resonant as a dead squid.
Think about it– do you see Pixar breathing down iPod’s neck about “content ownership”?
I know they treat their employees in their factories like crap and faceless morons.
Tim, and I disagree with you
Nobody buys cars solely because they need a reason to consume gasoline (except maybe, SUV owners bwah ha ha ha…)
The Sony story is the PSP. This device is to hand-held gaming what the iPod is to digital music — it will broaden and deepen the market, making it accessible to more people (if you told me my Mum would be into MP3s 3 years ago I would have laughed at you …).
The game industry as content purveyors have survived constant siege by piracy and internet delivery for a long time … it certainly isn’t quite the big deal it is to the movie industry. The biggest threat to the games industry is currently the massively increasing budgets (currently $5 million per game and set to move to $20 million in the next few years) and not content delivery being undermined by the net.
Oh, and the PSP also plays movies and music. And it should launch cheaper than the iPod.
The biggest issue is arguably Sony not opening up the system and allowing people to actually play MP3s on it instead of some awful proprietary format.