Why Sony Clies failed in the US
There’s an interesting article over at Brighthand that discusses why Sony failed in the US.
http://brighthand.com/article/Why_Sony_Failed_in_US
I don’t know if I agree completely with all the points but it’s interesting nonetheless.
He doesn’t mention that Sony also purposely crippled some of the best models when bringing them over here pissing off the educated customers who would have helped spread the word on these products.
But I do agree that in general, the American public is not as savvy about gadgetry compared to our European and Asian counterparts. Of course, these companies shouldn’t abandon the market but rather they should try to educate the customers better so they understand why they need these devices.
Sony’s software does leave little to be desired. Most of the time they seem to focus more on creating their own interfaces than on the actual functionality and workflow of the software. Sometimes, their software is neat but it’s never fully polished. Sony definitely has the resources to overcome this but it’s up to them to find a way to do it. I think they need to create a separate company that focuses specifically on software design and UI (maybe they do already….i don’t know) and come up with some cool, useful, and easy to use software not unlike the Apple iLife products.
