Sony Lessons Learned, Lessons Missed

摘要

Sony has been extremely successful in the consumer electronics market, including with its Walkman cassette player, audio CD standard (jointly with Philips), and PlayStation video-game system. However, less visible are a number of product attempts that have been relatively unsuccessful. Beyond Betamax, which, despite losing the standards war, went on to be successful as a commercial videotape standard, a variety of other Sony products failed to establish themselves in the marketplace. According to business author Steve Knopper, these include the Minidisc audio format, PressPlay music store, MusicClip (an SDMI-compliant digital music player based on the ATRAC DRM-protected standard), Connect music store (also ATRAC-based), and extended Copy Protection placed on music CDs via a software rootkit. See Knopper, S. Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. Free Press, New York, 2009.