Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Analysts are punishing Sony over its recent PS3 release delay announcement, with a number indicating that they believe the delay is just a bit too much for the market to bear. Unfortunately for Sony, they're probably right.
With Xbox 360 well and truly already
established, an HD DVD plug-in coming before the end of the year,
Microsoft and to a lesser extent Nintendo have the whole holiday
shopping season plus the ensuing three months to themselves.
By the time PS3 makes to store shelves in sufficient quantities, there
will probably be about 15 million Xbox 360 consoles in the market, many
of them with piggy-back HD DVD players.
For Sony, this may be too much on a number of fronts.
Gamers, as fanatical as they are about their craft, have only so much
money to spend and their pockets may well be empty by the time the
high-priced PS3 becomes available in March-April. No doubt, the first
batch of PS3 consoles will go out door quickly but it's the subsequent
sales that matter.
Looking at it things from a high definition video player perspective,
HD DVD already had a huge price advantage over Sony's Blu-ray. The PS3
was going to be a way to narrow the gap. However, that is not going to
happen for at least six months now. Meanwhile, in addition to the
relatively cheap HD DVD players already on the market, Microsoft will
bring out a US$200 plug-in box for the millions of Xbox 360 consoles.
In addition, Toshiba just yesterday announced a new three-layer disc
technology that will enable HD DVD discs to play on ordinary DVD
players.
Meanwhile, it is worth bearing in mind that the reason given for the
delay in manufacturing PS3 is a problem with the production process of
the Blu-ray diode.
As if to rub further salt into its wounds, the Sony name in
manufacturing has also suffered further pressure from the Lithium Ion
battery recalls by Dell and Apple.
Sony has a reputation as one of the world's great technology innovators
and manufacturers. However, 2006 will not be remembered as one of its
finest years.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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