Will Sony's new-found confidence bring ebook Reader to UK?
Sony is getting so confident, it's considering launching its famous ebook Reader in the UK. We've got our fingers crossed.
I'm jetting all over the shop at the moment. After all the excitement I had at CeBIT in Germany, I'm now in Rhodes to get the lowdown on Sony's new range of gear. Yes, I know it's a hard job, but someone has to do it.
Sony is hoping to use this event to put its recent troubles behind it, and it has good reason to be optimistic. The PlayStation 3 is finally out -- late, expensive and lacking in decent games perhaps, but come Christmas it won't matter. And yes, Apple may have stolen the Walkman masses away forever, but hi-def is where the real action is, and Sony's HD products are getting better with every iteration.
I expect that at some stage in the next 24 hours I'll be listening to a nice Japanese man telling me in broken English how Sony is the only company to provide a good end-to-end HD experience, from shooting HD on a Sony camcorder to editing it on a Sony Vaio computer then watching it on a Sony Bravia hi-def TV. He might even have a point.
I've been told to prepare myself for the European debut of the new Bravia range of HD TVs for 2007, together with some products that provide 'a seamless audio solution for Bravia' (sounds an awful lot like a 5.1 speaker set with an HDMI input to me).
I've also been tipped off that Sony is planning a major assault on TomTom later this year, with a range of new sat-nav products and a big advertising push.
The company is even getting confident enough to consider launching one of its most innovative products yet in the UK, the Sony Reader. No final decision has been taken on whether to sell it while the company works out the logistics, but we've got our fingers crossed.
Keep an eye on our Crave section for the latest news from the event.