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No, Sony is clearly NOT Apple. Sony IS a product manufacturer that made it big creating compelling hardware, but recently has seen its edge eroded by other manufacturers. They have been diversifying into content (like movies), which is proving to be a very different animal, but which they are dedicated to taming.
Maybe Sony hopes to compel publishers to release their current catalogs (which, by and large, are digital files anyway) in their formats, once they have a popular reader to point to, and glean profits through format or reseller royalties siphoned through Connect. Maybe Sony wants to buy a few publishing houses. As long as their content is lucrative, they will not worry overmuch about the content they do not control. This strategy could be as successful to them as opening the device to others' content... maybe moreso... and it affords them more control. So it's not that surprising how they are approaching the Reader and the Connect store.
I think most of us (and the rest of the public, for that matter) would be happy with the Reader accepting Connect content, and still being open to non-Connect content, as it is now. The biggest arguments seem to be about the high price of the hardware and the content. I think the hardware price will come down, and Reader features will improve, as is inevitable for new products as they develop and mature. At that point, Sony will assuredly be expecting to make it up in content profits. And if they are in the content business, they can exercise some control over content pricing, and therefore, their profit margins.
Once Sony, like Apple, would have been content making good hardware. Now, in many ways, Sony is the opposite of Apple, and their e-book business strategy reflects that. The fact that their strategy isn't an Apple strategy doesn't mean their strategy won't work. It's just working from the other side of the street.
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