Sony Clie
Not one to let a lucrative gizmo pass it by, Sony jumps on the PDA
Sony is a consumer electronics giant that needs no introduction. Their hands are in virtually every conceivable market for not only the hardware and gadgets themselves but the software and media to run them. Add to that Sony's penchant for deep research and development, creating their own proprietary standards for such things as videotape and optical storage. The merest whim from Sony has caused format wars dividing the entire industry into camps with its Blu-Ray and SACD technologies. They dominate the console gaming market with the PlayStation and make far and away the best handheld gaming platform to date in the PSP.
But in the handheld PDA marketplace, Sony looks uncharacteristically diminutive.
Sony's Clie line of handheld PDA devices is designed to run the Palm operating system. This means the Clie will support many of the same features as the Palm devices and will be compatible with the universe of applications, tools and utilities designed to run to on the Palm. But Sony's Clie line, like the company itself, has never been known to sit back and not bring innovation to their products. Clie was the first to bring multimedia expansion slots to the Palm OS world. They were the first to put a camera into a PDA. And, as similar as the Sony devices are to Palm's, the Clie offers a sharper esthetic and controls, with Sony's own brand of styling in the contours of the familiar Palm keys. At the top of the newest line of high-end Sony Clie devices is the TJ37, which includes WiFi, displayed on a 320x320 resolution, 65K colors on a backlit TFT powered by the 200 MHz i.MXL Motorola ARM processor with 32M of RAM.
Unfortunately for North American fans of the Sony Clie, Sony has stopped marketing to our side of the world. Sony announced in the summer of 2004 that they're pulling out of the North American PDA market but will continue to market their Clie line of PDA devices in Japan only.
Industry analysts predict Sony's pullout from the North American PDA could be indicative of greater problems for PDA in general, faced with increased competition for more connected devices. But CIO Today says:
"Stand-alone PDAs are likely to be a vital part of the corporate road warrior's gadget arsenal for some time to come."
The PDA market in North America, currently dominated by Palm, is expected to continue to sell some 10 million units per year for the foreseeable future. But total PDA sales are slipping and will continue to do so thanks to competitors like Blackberry and Smart Phone devices.