Despite Sony having its own financial woes which have forced the company to sell its NYC headquarters for $1.1 billion and Sony City Osaki building for $1.2 billion, there are other Japanese electronic companies who have fared even worse. Olympus is one of those companies and, had it not been for the cash injections from Sony in the last year, there might not be an Olympus to report about. So what has Sony gained in this equation? By investing $645 million into Olympus, Sony has become the biggest shareholder in the company, controlling just under 11.5% of the company.
Sony Corp.
In order to be a successful company, especially in the hyper competitive and ever changing electronics field, you need two ingredients to be successful. A good marketing campaign for your products and money which helps support future R&D and that marketing campaign. Sony’s electronic business which has been struggling for the past decade has been lacking both but all has begun to change under new CEO, Kaz Hirai. Over the last year, Sony has been busy offloading parts of their business that they no longer find relevant like the handheld tape recorder, laying off nearly 10,000 employees, and selling assets like their US headquarters in NYC for $1.1 billion. Now, you can add the Sony City Osaki building to that list.
Nearly a month ago, we reported on how Red Digital, the makers of the popular RED cameras, were suing Sony. The company believes that the Sony F65, F55, and F5 all infringe upon patents held by Red and not only must Sony pay financial penalties, but also destroy all existing cameras. Even then, we noted that the extreme quality of the suit and wording from Red points to the mindset that when you can’t beat them, sue them. This is especially true as Sony has singlehandedly beat Red with the 4K NEX-FS700 which is priced well below what Red has to offer while packing more features. Now, Sony has responded to the suit, stating that:
Welcome to The Grid, a digital utopia filled with infinite possibilities. A digital world designed for games, but it became so much more. However, due to his thirst for power, Clu, a powerful program based off of the creator, betrayed his creator and all other programs in this utopia. The only program who had the power to stop Clu, named Tron, was defeated by Clu and left for dead. With no one to stop him, Clu seized control of The Grid and has become a malevolent dictator. However, one program, named Beck, has the ability to surpass his own programming and take over the role of Tron, to try and overthrow Clu’s Empire.
The TRON: Uprising soundtrack is scored by Mr. Joseph Trapanese, who also arranged the music of Daft Punk for TRON: Legacy. To portray the digital and somewhat foreign atmosphere of The Grid, Trapanese uses extremely interesting digital and electronic sounds along side an orchestral sound. His mix of the acoustic orchestral instruments and the electronic sounds makes an extremely interesting sound that sounds like a foreign electro-orchestral type instrument, which is extremely successful in portraying the digital word of Tron. After the jump, we load deeper into the TRON: Uprising soundtrack.
In today’s connected world, we rely more and more on our mobile devices which allow us to share our thoughts, desserts, and position. Oftentimes, apps like your camera and FourSquare use your GPS coordinates in the background to help you locate a building or geo tag your photo. As more apps continue to rely on the GPS chip found inside of mobile devices, battery life once again becomes front and center as it can be one of the biggest power hogs of the system. That is, unless your mobile device is using the D5600 and D5601 chips.
Developed by Sony and set to ship in June and September, these latest flash-based GPS chips draw no more than 10mW of power for everything they do. In retrospect, most GPS chips draw that much power just to access RF components. Best of all, this latest GPS chip is compatible with most of the major systems, including:
Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) and satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS), as well as the Indoor Messaging System (IMES).
Just a quick one for you iOS users; Sony has released an update for their Music Unlimited app, compatible on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Nothing dramatic however as Sony’s own changelog points to:
- Updated Privacy Policy
- Added Settings option to clear search history
The latter is perfect for hiding your affection for Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj music. Sony has just recently upgraded their Music Unlimited service to provide music streaming at 320Kbps though support for iOS will come at a later time.
There tends to be two great sayings when it comes to the electronic world. When you can’t beat them, join them. Or in the case of Red Digital, the makers of the popular RED cameras, if you can’t beat them, sue them. Started in 1999 by Him Jannard, RED cameras have become quite popular with the indie and professional crowd, offering a low cost alternative to shooting in film while delivering superb quality. Most recently, RED cameras were used on movies like The Hobbit and, ironically, The Amazing Spider-Man from Sony Pictures. Sony, a long-time creator of professional cameras, has recently begun an expansion into the crowded $10,000 professional camera market with the 4K NEX-FS700 which is actually priced well below RED. Feeling the pinch from the competition, RED has reverted to the second option companies tend to take, suing their competitor. Furthering their class act, Red is seeking a court order to ban further sales of the Sony’s F65, F55 and F5 cameras and having them destroyed.
In what can be considered good news for Sony Mobile, Chief Marketing Officer, Steve Walker is stepping down after a 7 year stay with the company. During his time at Sony, Walker has gone through a lot of transformation with Sony by first entering into the mobile market years after Apple and Samsung. Eventually during his time there, Sony would break ties with Sony Ericsson and bring all mobile initiatives in house for a more consistent development cycle. Filling in Walker’s shoes will be Jacob Sten who currently leads the Sony Mobile Product Marketing department.
Ok, ok, the title above might be a bit absurd and/or a stretch, but then again, it might not be. Let me start from the beginning. Thanks to the USPTO, we’ve learned that Sony has applied for a new patent application that puts electrodes in a pillow. In recent years, thanks to devices like the Fitbit and Jawbone Up, tracking one’s cycle throughout the day has became quite the fad which offers some great feedback on our daily habits. The more elusive part of this new craze has been the ability to track one’s habits at night and, though many of the devices offer options to track your sleeping patterns and other behaviors while you sleep, none of them are quite perfect.
Enter Sony’s patent that will place electrodes in a pillow. While the idea of pillows that have sensors to monitor your sleep are nothing new, Sony is looking to advance the technology that removes the glue and sticks the sensors in your pillow. Instead, Sony wants to place the sensors inside of your pillow wirelessly. The use of the pillow with built-in sensors also goes beyond simple monitoring of your sleep pattern and extend to alarms that are based on your brainwaves. An example Sony gives is an alarm clock that monitors brain waves to detect when you enter and leave REM sleep. This would allow you to set an alarm clock that only wakes you after you’ve entered REM sleep, perfect for those who want a power nap.
Those who’ve been following Sony’s road towards recovery will be happy to hear that Sony has once again improved its financial outcome for the October to December period. Despite posting a $115 million loss, the company was able to lower losses by $83 million which saw the company lose $193 for the previous quarter and $312 million for the quarter before that. Further goods comes from the company’s revenue, which saw a dramatic increase, up near $17 billion to $21 billion as the yen weakened. This comes despite lower sales of the companies HDTV and Blu-ray players.
Crackle, the Sony operated interned video service that hosts original videos, as well as catalogue Sony films and shows, is expanding. The free video service which is already available on consoles, smartphones, tablets, and the web is expanding to LG, Samsung, and Vizio. All three companies are bringing Crackle to their line of 2013 smart televisions while Samsung is taking things further and also offering the ad-supported streaming service to its line of Blu-ray players.
If you’ve attended a college or high school classroom in the last 10 years and experienced something outside of a overhead projector, chances are that it was a low lit projector. Heck, even most fancy office board room meetings tend to go with projectors which offer low lumen count, resulting in a dim picture or blurred content. Wants the lights on for your meeting? Forget about it!
Enter the Sony Laser Light Source Projector, a world first which replaces the old bulb based technology with a 3LCD laser. This ensures that no bulb replacement is required in the projectors lifetime while offering a consistent 4,000-lumen.
Music Unlimited, Sony’s answer to popular music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify is getting a free upgrade. As of today, subscribes can choose to listen at a higher, 320Kbps, ensuring richer music. One caviet to note is that the upgrade will be gradual across Music Unlimited compatible devices. As of today, only Android, the PlayStation 3 and any supported web browser can take advantage of the higher bitrate. Sony has indicated that devices left out like the PlayStation Vita, Sony Bravia home theater units, and iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) will also receive the upgrade at a later time this year.
In order for any product to succeed in todays market, be it a tablet or a camcorder, it needs a great ecosystem to complement it. While some devices benefit more from a software ecosystem, say your smartphone which relies on apps to give it further functionalities, others rely more on a solid accessory ecosystem. This example is extremely apparent in the case of the Sony Action Cam, the companies take on the Go Pro line of cameras. For those not familiar, Go Pro is the go to MP4 camera for those with a taste of the extreme. Be it a snowboarder or the crew at Top Gear; chances are that their equipped camera is a Go Pro. This domination has come from the companies early entry into the market and due to its success, the great ecosystem of accessories which allow you to attach your unit to all sorts of things like cars, snowboards, helmets etc. etc.
This week we will begin bringing you guys a new feature called PlayStaion Mobile App of the Week. It’s pretty self explanatory, we look over some games we think are cool on PlayStation Mobile and then pick what we think is the best one and tell you guys a little about it. We will do this weekly for you guys, every Saturday.
This week’s app of the week is created by d3t Ltd, it’s called Lemmings. Now I know the name sounds weird but trust me when I say this game is a little gem. The objective of Lemmings is to get your little creatures called “Lemmings”, hence the name, from one point in the level to another without getting them killed. As you can see from the screenshots below you keep them alive by giving them powerups that you can see at the bottom of the screens. As you get into the game you notice that it becomes very tactical. You have to be very careful with which powerups you give and when you give them so that you don’t end up with a group of dead Lemmings on your hands.
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