Sony Plans Video Version of Vaio Pocket Device
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By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent
LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE, Belgium (Reuters) - Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news) (news - web sites)'s new portable audio player competing with Apple's iPod will be accompanied this year by another device which can play video and beam it to a TV, the Japanese company said on Friday.
The chief of Sony's Vaio computer and mobile products, Keiji Kimura, told Reuters he also expected to bring the audio version to Europe this year.
The world's biggest consumer electronics maker unveiled the new audio pocket player in Japan this week as part of an extended line-up of its Vaio computer products aimed at blurring the distinction between home entertainment and computing.
"Vaio pocket will be launched in Europe within this year," he said in an interview on the fringes of a global launch tour for the redesigned Vaio range. "As for the video version, we want to productize it as soon as possible. It's very near future. It will be earlier than (2005)."
Sony's new portable devices are key elements in the firm's drive to grab a chunk of the digital entertainment market that has so far been defined by Apple with its iTunes Music Store on the Internet and iPod portable jukebox that can store thousands of songs on a hard disk.
The iTunes Music Store is the most popular Internet music shop. It sold 70 million songs in its first year, accounting for the majority of music legally distributed over the Web.
Last week Sony opened its own Internet music store, Connect, in the United States, and will open European versions next month in Germany, France and the UK.
But the store has fielded early criticism from consumers because the music can only be played back on devices that use Sony's standards for encryption and digital rights management.
Apple uses a more standard technology to compress songs for faster downloads and more efficient storage, but, like Sony, it protects songs against piracy with its own technology.
"(Sony's Connect) is too late and incompatible to compete effectively," Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff said after the launch.
INCOMPATIBLE, BUT NOT FOR LONG
Kimura, who said it was still very early days for digital entertainment and the race against Apple was by no means run, was hopeful that Sony and its rivals would open each other's technologies up to each other.
In a first step, within four to eight weeks some 100 electronics and software makers brought together in the Digital Home Working Group will come up with the first specification of connection standards for easier communication between devices, he said.
As a result, Sony will use the standard 802.11G Wi-Fi technology -- already popular among computer users to hook up wirelessly to the Internet -- to send video from the Vaio Pocket to a TV. Other home network equipment makers, like Cisco-owned Linksys, also use 802.11G.
"That's the first, fairly low level of communication standards. I'm now totally pushing the second phase in which we'll (set standards for) other key issues such as the digital rights management and rules to use content," he said.
Hollywood and the music industry will now be invited to the table to help eradicate the already abundant fragmentation of the emerging digital entertainment market, he said.
"Without agreement it's going to be very tough to create the e-home. We have a concern (about interoperability) at the hardware side. The content guys have the same concern," he said.
Standards are crucial if the electronics industry is to convince consumers to replace home entertainment systems with new networked products that will work together, Kimura said.
Electronics makers have high hopes for the networked home where consumers can watch, edit, store and swap entertainment such as video, audio, games and pictures between products such as mobile devices, computers, TVs and DVD recorders.
Sony's first home network products, for example, enable consumers to record a TV show on their home computer even when they are behind their desk in the office, and send these TV programs wirelessly to any TV set in the home.
But Kimura estimated it would take three more years before the average consumer will be able to use these services.
"For the general consumer, home entertainment networking is still very difficult to understand. And as a rule, we know that if a product is not exciting to a consumer, they are never going to accept it," he said.
