It seems that Sony is finally shaking the tree to emerge from the slump in which it has been during the last couple of years. Indeed, building almost only the Walkman and Trinitron brands actually turned out to be a devastating strategy starting in 2000 for the once King in electronics: for the first time, convergence was not a visionary fantasy anymore, but was rapidly becoming a reality. Products like the Flash and hard-disk mp3 players from Singaporean star Creative and others like iRiver and Archos (wrongly regarded as "cheap", me-too manufacturers) were starting to earn their name in the market.
How did Sony then react? Well possibly the worst way they could - making a Betamax-like mistake again (who said history repeats?): instead on joining the flow of companies adopting the de facto MP3 standard, Sony desperately sticked to its ATRAC3 format (the same one that MiniDisc uses). One could also extend the criticism to its Memory Stick format, but it's at least adopted by others and ubiquituous along Sony's product line (VAIO PCs, digital cameras, smartphones...).
Therefore, what a pleasant surprise it was when Sony announced that starting from now, their audio players would natively read MP3. Not only that, but their soon to be released Playstation Portable (PSP) will also have built-in MP3 support! Speaking of the PSP, Sony Computer Entertainment has also released official videos and trailers of the PSP in action, which was premiered at the Tokyo Game Show 2004.
Uncrippled audio and video players. Sleeker laptops than ever. A serious contender to the Game Boy Advance. Advanced HDTV sets. Looks as Sony still has nifty things up in their sleeves, 25 years after the first Walkman...
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