There’s an interesting article over at Brighthand that discusses why Sony Clies 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. Kinda like the folks here…Sony isn’t doing anything to help the sales of Sony TR and it’s enthusiastic folks like us that help spread the word!!! And we would be spreading the word even more if they gave us US customers the built-in Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g to begin with.

well i thought it was cool the way one could record tv programmes onto a memory stick using a sony 42"lcd and then watch them on a clie, now that is cool

I use the Memory Stick “VCR” all the time.  It IS cool.

I agree with most of that post. Having the orginal Pilot and nearly 10 Palm PDAs in between I do see the PDA shift focus and I kept saying they are killing their own sales.

I need something like the Visor Edge…thin and light, with weeks of battery, but I want a color screen.

I had the Rex PDA (both actually) and it was amazing. It was a PCMCIA card with a screen. It did phone #s, and calander, etc…I loved it, except…when you tried to create documents, after the initial line of text, the PDA would slow down for each letter you typed. It got to be too annoying. With newer technology, that design could have worked wonders. Oh well.

Erik

Exactly! Something super thin and light, that’s durable, has a bright color screen, and weeks of battery life. That’s all i want from a PDA. I guess having some form of wireless BT or Wifi would be nice for wireless synchronization. I don’t want multimedia features or a camera. I just want something to look up my contacts and appointments real quick in a form factor that’s a little better than a phone.

You basically can’t get anything like this anymore. Too much feature bloat and less simplicity.

I read that a little while ago. I don’t disagree with Larry’s assessment of japanese vs american consumers, but I don’t think that was the main reason Sony ultimately failed. They had a bunch of high-technology models but they were all compromised in some way, whether it was price (UX-50), crippled features (the BT-less TH-55) or just god damn big (NZ-90). That wasn’t great, but it didn’t kill them. As much as we whine and cry about Sony not giving us the latest and greatest, many (most?) of us have Clie PDAs.

The problem is that Sony couldn’t or wouldn’t properly identify their target customer base in the US and release models to that base. They released the japanese models targeted towards japanese consumers in the US. Americans tend to be much more pragmatic, utilitarian and cost-conscious than the japanese. Palm understands this and has a couple of ~$100 models. Sony has nothing under $200. PPCs are a similar price point to the Clie, but PPCs in general also target businesses, Sony doesn’t. If they’re not targeting Joe Sixpack or businesses, what does that leave left? The (relatively) small enthusiast market. American enthusiasts (and americans in general) tend to like good product support in addition to good products and tend to get upset if there isn’t the support they desire. There’s plenty of proof on this forum. The average japanese consumer doesn’t have the same sort of attitude. Add to this the model-go-round syndrome Sony is famous for and you have a real muddle.

Exactly! Something super thin and light, that’s durable, has a bright color screen, and weeks of battery life. That’s all i want from a PDA. I guess having some form of wireless BT or Wifi would be nice for wireless synchronization. I don’t want multimedia features or a camera. I just want something to look up my contacts and appointments real quick in a form factor that’s a little better than a phone.

You basically can’t get anything like this anymore. Too much feature bloat and less simplicity.

I could deal with WiFi and or BT, but then you add another $100-200 in price and kill the battery and make it bigger/heavier.

I want 1 week battery of normal use, wifi or not. If they can do that and make it thin and light, i’d still pay $600 for a PDA.

Erik

They pulled the UX series from SonyStyle…now its just the TH and TJ series…one step closer to total pullout… :cry:

Erik