Dreamsmademe Blog

SONY's dismay continued.

Years back when I got my SONY CLIE SJ-33 it inspired me to see a future about to come which I nowadays witness. I can't believe if some tech savvy person headded the SONY R&D division why he couln't see these directions for their CLIE PDA line's future.

The CLIE gave me the first sense of a digital converge device which I want to own someday.

• It had 320X320 65K nice screen
• Palm OS as a leading OS for handhelds
• The basics to handle pictures and multimedia
• Basic but good quality mp3 and  ATRAC3 player
• Nice Palm's PIM suite for businesses on the move
• Promising gaming platform with games like Bejeweled
• And basically all the software titles written for Palm OS

This inspired me of a combined device like today's Treo 650, Apple's iPod and SONY's own PlayStation. All are equal winners in their own markets. But SONY made no effort to come up with CLIE successor while PalmOne and Apple now leads the gang. The opportunity is surely lost for SONY to developed such a cool device based on the CLIE series. So obviously with no promising future direction they had to discontinue it.

They could have made the CLIE, the Walkman, the PlayStation and integrate Treo and iPod it to be the killer device of our time. They had the design skills, Palm OS knowledge and the PlayStation, CLIE, VAIO, Walkman and all in their cards. But today CLIE which I jot down these writings is a dead product.

Instead now rivals of SONY having their party in full swing.

• Treo and the HP iPaq leads the PDA clan.
• Apple iPod, iTunes, Creative Nomad and Samsung clan leads the digital music and designer ends.
• PalmOne, Symbian, Nokia and the  Microsoft Pocket PC shines in the smartphones end.
• Canon, Kodak and Nikon shines in the digital camera trade.

All are doing well but once a mammoth SONY is nowhere to be seen in the gadgets industry unless the PlayStation. Soon Microsoft's XBox outwit it too. No one inside SONY was smart enough to figure out the future they lost for the last decade. Now nobody calls their name for well known technology or cool devices like Walkman anymore. But as a consumer I don’t lose anything. I’ve already gotta iPod and soon gonna own a Treo 650. Sad but Goodbye SONY!

If I were heading SONY I would have long gone to exile and do some peanut business instead. Shame on them.