Sony should push the OLED barrel to save its skin

commentary It's been a tough time for Sony of late — it lost US$2.1 billion between October and December last year, and is on course to be US$2.9 billion in the red for the year ending March 2012. That makes painful reading for someone, like myself, who grew up in a world where Sony was one of the pre-eminent names in technology.

Despite the spate of losses in recent years — the blame for which can be variously attributed to self-inflicted wounds and natural disasters — Sony remains a titan in the industry. Its losses in less quantifiable areas, such as cachet, prestige and desirability, have been just as steep and will be much harder to regain.

Can Sony regain its mojo?

Of course it can. In late February, Sony's worldwide launch of the portable PlayStation Vita shows that the public and media are more than willing to pay attention to Sony. Although the fact that Sony shares a cosy oligopoly in the games console market with Nintendo and Microsoft does help immensely.

Nonetheless, coverage reached saturation point and the reviews, despite the tricky memory card situation and a rear touch pad that's more gimmick than feature, were positive. And it's probably no coincidence that Apple announced its intention to reveal the new iPad on 7 March this week, well and truly after the wave of Vita hype had crested and broken ashore.

Can that Vita mojo be used for other parts of the empire?

The answer to this, too, is of course it can. Making the Sony Entertainment Network's vast array of movies and music available across multiple platforms — PlayStation 3, Vita, mobile phones and PC — is a good step, but it needs to be better sorted out. PC software has never been Sony's strong point and this needs to change, and Music Unlimited can't come soon enough to the Vita.

Even with these problems ironed out, this will make Sony just competitive. It will continue to play second fiddle to iTunes, as well as Netflix and others overseas, who got in earlier and dominated their respective fields of play. Being competitive, though, will make it easier for Sony to ride whatever the next great media delivery wave will be.

What the company needs, I believe, is a technology on which it can hang its hat on. Strangely enough it's actually got one, but Sony's just not trumpeting it at the moment: OLED.

Sure it led the world with the first production OLED TV, the AU$7000 XEL-1, and has an interesting piece of kit in the Personal 3D Viewer. But these are niche items, OLED is here and now, and it's just racked up 1.2 million sales.

Anyone who has played with or bought a Vita will know what I'm talking about. The Vita's screen is a piece of art — it's bright, the colours are punchy without being saturated and the blacks are almost just that. Add on to that colours and images that stay true even when viewed at almost side on, it makes the Vita a joy to use.

Unfortunately, Sony has relegated the screen to an afterthought in its promotion work.

Imagine if Sony had a product roadmap where its next range of Sony-sans-Ericcson phones were OLED only, ditto any new Walkmans or tablets, and the next generation of Bravias featured at least one affordable OLED screen in a room-friendly size.

Then the company could proudly tout OLED in all of its major devices. Tied in with music and movies from the Sony Entertainment Network, as well as a common interface based on either the Vita's or the PlayStation's Cross Media Bar, customers for a phone or a tablet would have ample reasons to choose a Sony over all the other Android devices, not to mention the iPhone or iPad.

In a short space of time OLED and Sony would become synonymous, and Sony would be a byword for brilliant picture quality. Remember how, a few years ago, it was so easy for Samsung to become associated with LED televisions? By going the hardest and shouting the loudest, Samsung drove people into stores to ask for a new TV that merely featured a new type of backlighting technology.

This association is vital as OLED devices head toward ubiquity. Remember the Walkman? Even after the market was swamped with competitors, Sony was still able to charge a premium and offer fewer features. Why? Because it was first, it owned the concept and the company was associated with superior quality in terms of design, output and ruggedness.

Given Sony's phone announcements over the past week at Mobile World Congress, OLED Xperias are a little way off yet, and we haven't heard any positive rumours regarding an affordable OLED TV on the event horizon. This is a real shame because windows of opportunity in the tech world, with its short product life cycles and our even shorter attention spans, are small.