Quote:
Originally Posted by vxf
But the last models have been sold for only 9 months, and unavailable for a large portion of that (well, at least the 650). How's that sustainable, as a business model?
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Cellphone manufacturers release models every few months, how is that sustainable?
The problem here is that Sony isn't in a good position. It's hard to sell the 650 in the face of the STR and Kindle being >100$ cheaper (list) with more functionality. When I see people looking in stores, it isn't Sony vs B&N vs Amazon, it's B&N vs Amazon.
The upside is that they don't need to do a major revamp of hardware, which can be expensive. Really what a new model would be about would be cost and feature parity. So that can be done on more of an advanced schedule. It isn't like they were resting on their laurels and not doing anything. I would bet that even as they were waiting for the 950 to start becoming available, if they are releasing new models, they started before the 950 even officially launched. Cutting a couple months off the normal cycle to answer B&N and Amazon is better than continuing to bleed out for those extra months.
Rapid hardware releases may not be sustainable in the long term, but it doesn't have to. The problem is Sony's value prop isn't good enough, and they need to catch up in terms of cost ASAP. From that point they move back to a more sustainable cycle after stopping the bleed.