Sony’s got a couple of tablets coming down the pipe that they would like to have out before the end of 2011. While more Honeycomb-powered Android tablets sound great, these tablets are unique in their design. And, while Sony may not be the leader in unique designs, these new tablets certainly take the cake for thinking “out of the box.” It got me thinking about Sony Ericsson, and how the company is trying to change their presence in the Android market. They’ve got three new devices coming soon, one of which is heavily dependent on the PlayStation brand, and I’m sitting here wondering if Sony Ericsson has the legs to stand on when it comes to taking chances with innovation.
Let me just say first that every company should have someone in their ranks working on innovation. Someone in the office thinking up new and crazy ideas, even scribbling some of them down on paper. Or drawing up fanciful tablet ideas. But, before you can bring them to market, I think you need to show off a strong portfolio of devices that have sold, and done well after being sold. Devices that are loved by consumers and critics and people living under rocks.
Sony Ericsson doesn’t have that. They certainly don’t have it in the Android market. Sure, they’ve been around for a long time and they’ve come up with some great phones in the past, but Sony Ericsson doesn’t have the name that Apple does, or Samsung or HTC. It’s a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless.
With that in mind, I’m wondering if the company should just take a step back and look over their ideas, and maybe tone it back a notch. Yes, they’re making some desperately needed alterations to TimeScape and MediaScape, but even the handsets themselves seem overzealous more than anything else.
I look at the Arc, which I got to play with a few times at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and I wasn’t impressed. It’s thin, sure, but the whole thing just didn’t feel up to par with other handsets, especially when compared to what HTC and Samsung have coming. And then there’s the Play, which is just an ugly device when it’s slid open, and having it open is kind of the whole point, right?
I think Sony Ericsson has a lot of potential, especially with the features they can throw into phones: high-end cameras, hardware and plenty of software options thanks to Sony. If they take it a bit slower and look at how, say, HTC handles things; they might be able to get a better foothold in the market.
Let me know what you think of Sony Ericsson and how they’re going about their presence in the Android world. Do you think they’re going about things the right way? Or should they change a few things?
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