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Originally Posted by SensualPoet
Sony is a MUCH larger company than Amazon and has deep, deep experience in content, as well as home electronics. Sony must have started out with a vision to lead the market when it launched, leveraging its ability to partner in diverse markets around the world. The reality is it dropped the ball, sidetracked by the Blu-ray and PS3 divisions, no doubt, who had a larger voice at the table at the time. Those running the ereader division may have been very well-intentioned but they did not get corporate executive mindshare to invest aggressively enough to create the industry.
Amazon did. It has its own views about what makes a customer-centric experience the best possible, and a vision on why connectivity must lie in the very DNA of the product. In an age dominated by the Internet and, at the time (2006), 12 years since the explosion of broadband began, leaving connectivity out of the equation was short-sighted on Sony's part.
It's great to hear something of new models and once more details arrive we can evaluate these better. The units themselves, the distribution model, the value add they bring over the other players in the market, and the ability to add and share quality content -- to say nothing of how they treat their existing base -- will all be crucial to win a second chance to stay in the game.
And, Sony could partner with a variety of players in co-branding or shared ownership or technology or customer base. But Sony's tendency to insist on doing everything inhouse suggests it probably will not.
BTW, Best Buy still sells PRS 505s on its Canadian website for those interested. The fact they are still trying to get rid of a model discontinued a year (or was it two years) ago, speaks volumes.
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And yet, despite it's mega-humongo-supra-size, Sony routinely gets it wrong. Betamax, rootkits, PRS-500/505... Just goes to show that the smaller, faster, more flexible company does better than the Sonysaurus.
Derek