M@Blog

Yahoo! Japan: an increasing threat to Sony

It should be pretty clear to most who have been watching Sony’s activities over the past few years that Sony’s top management really doesn’t get the Internet. What exactly does “get the Internet” mean? Well, for starters, realizing that with billions of people connected on the same platform, there will inevitably be a large number of people as smart as and as capable as your employees. Realizing that each one of them is just a few milliseconds apart, and that if one of them is displeased with a product and can say it convincingly, Sony has a problem on its hands. Realizing that this interconnectedness is not only increasing the users’ dependence on technology, but that users’ knowledge of technology is dramatically increasing as well.

So imagine my amusement when I read from SeekingAlpha that Yahoo! Japan is encroaching further into Sony’s living room:

Yahoo Japan said it has licensed Mediabolic’s software to develop the Yahoo! Digital Home Engine, a technology that will enable consumers to access web-based content directly from televisions or stereos.

Sony continues to announce cool gadgets but with proprietary means of interconnecting - which in the past was just fine when options were sparse and technology wasn’t as intertwined in users’ daily lives. Most people didn’t have a need to connect their one computer to their tv to their digital camera to their mobile phone. Now there are hundreds of options a customer can consider for almost any given technology gadget - Sony should have been able to forecast this shift and focus away from box making towards service integration. After all, at one point not all that long ago there was a large and loyal base of Sony customers. Why not create a platform for them to communicate not just amongst themselves (which is what Grouper’s acquisition is essentially about) but with the larger as-yet-unconvinced or still-considering community?

As Sony reverts back towards its box making days, choosing to control all aspects of a products use, the competition, realizing most people need to connect a variety of brands’ products, comes in and tries to solve this problem. And where there’s a problem to be solved, there’s often money - good money - to be made.