Sometime this year, Sony will launch a new smartphone and a portable tablet-like device, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The smartphone will be able to play PlayStation games, and the tablet device will be some combination of a Netbook, e-reader, and PlayStation Portable, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Journal. The reading/gaming/computer gadget is intended to better compete with the Apple iPad and an expected wave of similar devices from other gadget makers. Both products are supposed to hit store shelves this year, though there are not yet any details on price.
Sony has already announced it is launching a digital download service called Qriocity (pronounced “curiosity”), later this month as a rival to iTunes. Movies, TV shows, music, and video games will be available for download, and these new devices are intended to work with the service.
Though Sony won’t confirm it’s working on such a device, it’s clear the company has its eye on Apple. At a press conference last month, Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda expressed his company’s interest in competing in the touch-screen tablet market with Apple.
Seems like whenever Apple comes out with something new, all the other companies follow suit… good for the consumer.
Who buys all this junk? I still don’t even own a cell phone, never needed one, never wished I had one. If someone needs to speak to me, they wait until I get to a land line in my own sweet time.
Maybe that’s why I don’t always have the feeling that my freedoms are being eroded (like I see a lot of on DU).
As for Sony … late for the party again and bringing last year’s popular wine. Too bad, the name Sony used to mean something.
iPad can hardly be described as “something new”
As always, Sony will introduce their stylish, well designed, high quality gadgets that will get the worse ratings among consumers thanks to the crippling DRM they integrated into the devices.
THEN Samsung will throw a clone that pretty much does the same thing but without the DRM.
#5 – Angel, not to mention the expensive proprietary stuff like the Memory Stick. Let’s not forget the root kit they handed out in their CDs!
BTW, I just got a B&N Nook e-Book reader that has DRM. The nook mounts as storage and when you drag their directories onto another disk, no more DRM.
I wouldn’t recommend the Nook at this point, the software is too flaky.
This tablet like device looks promissing ! Hope it can run PC platform applications also, and comes at a decent price.
It comes with a FREE rootkit.
Sony, like Apple, is proud of their DRM and proud of their proprietary peripherals. I see a big FAIL coming up.
I wonder they have slot for Memorystick?
The Sony gadgets have always been good, but beware any software that ships with them. That’ll make you despair of life. I think those are developed by other (inept) companies. I hope. My MD experience from years ago still makes me cringe.
Sad that every single company is forced into innovation due to Apple.. they don’t have one ounce of originality and lag Apple by years. Albeit that Apple isn’t exactly inventing something brand new, they do however have fantastic GUI and synch’ing with their other products in a way no other company can.