CES 2011 Round–Up. Time to shift 3D focus

It’s already  been two days since CES ended and I haven’t had the time to post until now. I think it’s fair to say that all Sony fans were disappointed by Sony’s showing at CES. The biggest news incidentally wasn’t what Sony unveiled at CES, but what they didn’t unveil. The most anticipated, the Sony tablet and Playstation Phone were nowhere to be seen, but were only mentioned from a note from Kaz Hirai that a line of tablets was in the works and maybe a hint of a smartphone that would incorporate certain services from the ‘Playstation Business’.
It is extremely evident that Sony is strongly focused on the delivery of 3D products and services, with almost every product announced at the press conference having 3D technology. However sometimes I get the feeling that in the midst of providing everything in 3D, Sony is forgetting other areas of their product range, particularly mobile products, which was disappointing because mobile products were all the rage at CES this year. Companies like Motorola and others who didn’t have much of a presence at CES in previous years came back storming this year and stole the show. The reason why Motorola and others shone was because of the introduction of new tablets and smartphones that consumers are primarily interested in nowadays. Our lives are becoming more mobile than ever and we expect to be able to access, all our content and entertainment everywhere we go.





It was unfortunate, that mobile devices were evidently lacking at Sony’s booth. All the Vaio’s that were introduced had nothing of value but were simply just any other computer shoved into a Sony casing, the one that did was the 3D Vaio F which can’t truly be considered portable. The ones that looked promising were only design concepts. The Xperia Arc, although an amazing phone didn’t appear to have Sony’s Qriocity store built-in which completely defies Sony’s strategy of implementing Qriocity into as many devices as possible, including ‘portable devices’. We can’t be entirely disappointed at the lack of a tablet as Kaz did state that they were in development, perhaps Sony intended to unveil it later and not be caught in the tidal wave of tablets at CES as ‘just another tablet’. Also any updates to the Walkman brand were not to be seen, which is extremely disappointing given that besides Sony Ericsson handsets, it is Sony’s other brand for pocketable devices. Have Sony just ditched everything to focus on 3D?

Although 3D is definitely a technology for the future and it is great that Sony is pushing themselves as a leader at the forefront of this technology, it isn’t holding much interest for consumers at the moment, due to the fact that 3D is primarily an ‘at-home’ technology, and 3D is a passive technology, which like televisions and speakers hold little interest for consumers nowadays. In a world where network services and connectivity is gold, consumers want to be able to do things and customise things with the technology that they obtain which is why internet connected devices are becoming more and more popular. 3D is simply a one-purpose technology which offers no potential for customisation or expansion of sorts. That’s not to say that I think Sony should ditch 3D, in actual fact I strongly believe that Sony should continue to develop 3D and continue to be the leader, however maybe they should change their focus?
Sony need to stop simply selling products because they have 3D in them but because they have other valuable features too, in a similar way that specs aren’t the only features that sell computers but other valuable software features too, which brings me to one of my previous posts where I stated that software and expandability is more important than superior hardware features in a networked world. Although Sony is incorporating many software features into it’s 3D enabled products for example Qriocity store and Bravia Internet Video and various other social and media implementations into 3D enabled Bravia’s and PS3 and other products, to most people these features are unknown and are not the selling point. If they marketed these services better, knowing that it is the content and software that matters, perhaps these products will sell better as social and media rich devices which happen to have 3D technology incorporated into them as a secondary selling point.