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Sony Mobile's Decline? | The Friday Debate Podcast 005

2015-02-20
hello everybody and welcome to the Friday debate podcast episode number five discussing topics in android every single week I am of course your host Joshua freghar from Android Authority what's going on everybody and I'm joined by our regular panel of co-hosts we have Joseph Indy Andrew crush and Jonathan Feist how's it going all you guys hello Internet all right cool so as always the Friday debate podcast discusses topics in Android every week and this week we're going to be talking about Sony but Before we jump into our topic I want to remind everybody especially our viewers on the YouTube channel that you can find the Friday debate podcasts on all of the different podcast channels from iTunes to stitch or to pocket casts so make sure you head on over there and like I mentioned at the end of our episode last week we did actually ranked on the top 100 of the podcast network so thank you guys so much for putting us up there and don't forget to keep listening and also to reveal on the different networks that allow you to that ups our visibility and we would love to see what you guys think of our podcast but nonetheless we're gonna go ahead and just jump right into what we have this week like I said we're talking about Sony and if you've been following our web site over the last couple days you've probably heard a little bit of interesting news from them but our topic will explain that so here we go earlier this week Sony announced that its corporate strategy for 2015 to 2017 involves taking less risk when it comes to TV and mobile with the company and said electing to focus most of its attention on areas that it thinks there is room for real growth like the PlayStation platform whoo image sensors for mobile and camera as well as its entertainment business the bottom line it seems Sony has lost face faith in mobile what went wrong what can they do to turn things around or are they better off cutting their losses and selling their mobile division just like they did with their Vaio PC division early last year all right I'm gonna open up the panel right now I want to talk first about what went wrong with Sony and why don't we start off with if you're a fan of the Sony smartphones and then you can talk you can dive into what what what what you think went wrong with the mole division over at Sony any of you guys can go ahead and start I'll start there wait for somebody else to go first um I don't know if I'm a fan of Sony phones because I've never had one I've seen a few of them a friend of mine just got the the z3c or whatever the small one which one was that ah the small one the Z oh the compact right do you start with the color yeah yeah the compact one so I gotta take a look at that for a little bit and like I like the aesthetic I like the way that they look and you know their high-end phones with decent specs um but I think that the big problem is lack of availability I we've discussed this before on this podcast I'm almost dead sure of it but um yeah you know you can't find a consistent Sony experience Oh across the whole world like you can with you know a galaxy device or you know HTC has been doing it a lot more with their HTC One series devices and you know you don't see that kind of omnipresence with Sony and I think that that's their biggest problem with with Mobile's they're just they're not in enough places to make a big enough of a lasting impact you know what I mean yeah well I mean the the the the fact that Sony isn't necessarily a wide-reaching company is kind of an oxymoron when you talk about a huge company like it and I guess the mobile division is one of the few places that they have that problem but from what I can tell and I have and we did mention availability before on this podcast and I think at that time I mentioned that Sony seems to have a big foothold in places like Europe and Canada but if they're not making money in those places I don't know maybe they're actually not selling in Europe and Canada that's something that seems like a bit of an anomaly to me but why don't we jump over to either Andrew or Jonathan either of you guys want to give your thoughts on what kind of went wrong with Sony's mobile division sure okay so as far as what went wrong there's a lot of factors I mean it's easy to say that the whole twice-a-year phone you know that they do they do two to five chips a year definitely contributed and I think that's true let's see there's that the fact that the z3 wasn't really much different than the z2 at all probably didn't help Emma we've talked we've talked more than once about you know a limited availability particularly in the Western markets like the United States but you know I think those are all valid points and I think they contributed but it I think it's more complicated than that I think that Sony was slow to get really into the smartphone game I mean they've been here since the beginning don't get me wrong but as far as truly innovating and bringing us something wonderful I mean you don't like display the display technology I mean correct me if I'm wrong but the display technology was pretty awful for a long time right yeah I think that the viewing angles and yeah I remember those very well the early experience late when was it that they addressed it with a Z 2 job yeah busy too it was definitely the detail and so I mean it's just it's just little stuff like that it's like Sony's product looks good I have I I don't have I do not own a Sony mobile device I've never owned a Sony smartphone but I have a friend who has the z2 and I think it's a solid answer and I've seen others many times and I like their the form factor I think it's a little boring I mean it's in a way I mean it's a square it has sharp sharp angles and I think that the design is gotten a little better with a z3 and it's it's slowly evolved but it's been a little boring in my opinion I think that probably doesn't help but bottom line I think it's just the fact that they haven't been aggressive enough they haven't you know even their software I mean we can definitely say that it's awesome that they don't add a lot of blow and that's you know one of their positives but the same time I haven't used it a lot so you can probably speak on this a little better Josh but is there anything like super amazing about their software either though well from those I don't have some yeah I mean they're they're software tends to not focus on flash as much as the rest which was always a plus to me and I always thought that you know people should be flocking to these Sony phones because they they don't sort of punch you in the face with all of their features the way that say a Samsung or now G phone might try to sometimes and I don't know like while the look of look and feel of the actual operating system itself could use a refresh the way that Android used to when I went from an ICS to freaking jelly bean and to KitKat after that like I do think that the Sony phones I I kind of disagree with you Andrea I don't think that their phones are boring I actually think there's some of the best made phones that are out there well they're super super solid I mean they are they're there I've always kind of thought and not just in phones but just in general I've always kind of thought of and some people might take this negatively but I don't mean it mega differently they're kind of the apple of non iOS and Mac world when it came to their PCs when it came to everything there was head kind of that you know style that stood out that was just you know they had the durability they had a sleekness and I'm not an Apple fan but I admit the Apple has good aesthetics to a point um and I think that Sony is kind of the was the windows world and the androids world version of that in a way and so I'm not saying they're ugly or anything I just think that uh there has been enough change in their the design link which I guess was more of my point was that right before we did this call we did sort of discuss what our topic was going to be like how we're gonna go through and you mentioned the hundred that you didn't think I'm Sony evolved or they were very slow to evolve in the mobile space can you kind of elaborate on that was it really just in terms of aesthetics and design or did you have even more like underneath the surface to comment on well I mean yeah that's definitely part of it uh I just think that uh I mean I'm not gonna lie I'm not gonna say that I've used tons of their older I mean I've used like what was the Xperia Play the varan Verizon that was the plaid the PlayStation controller I've used some of the older ones but as far as like the ericsson some stuff I don't have a huge amount of familiarity other than just seeing them and passing from other people but it just seems like sony sony missed the boat in some ways i mean i just feel like you know i wonder and this is speculation but when it comes to like software yes it's good you know there tends to be two camps people who like stock android and people who actually legitimately enjoy the extra features that you get from you know sense and TouchWiz the thing about sony though is they don't have a lot of bloat but their aesthetics are still different than stock two so it doesn't really I don't know does it really appeal to the stock crowd or the people who want lots features that kinda doesn't hit either side you know I mean okay so that's one thing mm-hmm and then I I just I mean I really yeah I think that a lot of it just had to do with the fact that as far as aggressive new technologies sony's been more tepid about it i mean it hasn't been huge pushes forward in my opinion and that's just my opinion okay all right let's move on over to feisty feisty your thoughts on Sony and what might have gone wrong with their mobile division is there anything left to say after crush II you know I can only echo and jump off of that you know obviously there's availability issues there's pricing issues I'll get into that in a second but there's that design now we were talking about HTC and the Samsung's and stuff of the world a few podcasts back you know we were talking about them you know they're innovating they're the actual design of their devices they're you know they're going out they're curved displays it's all this kind of stuff and at that time we have we kind of applauded Sony for just sticking with it they've got a designed and they ultimately they haven't changed it much in the last few and you know we praised them then but I would have to say on the flip side right now it's that's part of their yeah part of their down from using the word downfall loosely here but and this is again was a quick Russia was saying what's up you know they haven't done anything extreme you know they haven't jumped off any cliffs for us and yeah that's got to hurt them just a little bit well but isn't there any I think one of the big things is the price tag you know when this certainly in the in the United States this thing comes out I look at it you know great phone I'd love to get one that's a little bit too expensive a few months later six months a year whatever the price drops hey no I'm still too expensive maybe there's one more price drop but you know what it still can't afford it and then right there's been three other Xperia Z's yeah exactly there's more phones out or it just disappears inventories done that's it it's gone so by the time you know it becomes affordable for a lot of people it it's done it's gone mmm well I mean before before we get into the that I had in mind I did want to sort of do a little bit of explanation the the the idea of releasing a phone every six mile most said two months that would have been in saying hey do you have putting out a phone every six months is actually a very at the risk of sounding a little bit a little bit odd here it's a very Japanese way of business and you have constant updates every time there might be even just a little bit it may be just an inch forward even when it comes to a product they find a way to justify to put it out it's something that a lot of the companies happen to do in Japan that are from Japan and it's a bit of a weird notion to a lot of us Western users who are used to like every year or so and but the thing is that even the smartphone industry itself and this is just my opinion has made it so that we don't necessarily have phones for a long time anymore we actually have to plan out to have a new phone every single year they have put that in our minds where back in the day we might have had a phone for maybe two maybe two and a half years because those were how long our contracts used to be before even any upgrades were a part of the deal but aside from all that excusing its feisty isn't there a market though for people who want maybe going back to basics isn't that not what Sony has been able to do with their phones as of late to sort of create a very solid like Andrew said an attractive phone that doesn't necessarily have to have all the bells and whistles that people for the most part may not really flock to yes for the most part but I wonder if advertising hurts that I looked at you know followed along obviously the Xperia z3 release and you know what I was seeing was lots of stuff on there triluminos display and you know they promoted that and you know regular consumer I'm assuming they don't care what the display is moto it made out of as long as it works and then use some of the other things they focused on forgive me I forget the name of it but their camera software word superimposes you know jungle scenes or you know that sort of so yeah that's really a are cool but you know I don't think the average Android user really they might really enjoy having it but that's not so to speak a selling point of the phone so promoting all of that stuff I think you mentioned that the Japanese market maybe it works excellent there and people who are used to it you know all the hype around the Hello Kitty's of the world I assume there's that benefit you know I'm not down downplaying any of this I'm just stating facts of speaking for myself I don't care if there's a cute character on the front of the box or not I'm looking at the spec sheet well it's it's funny you mentioned that because for the record Sony hasn't actually been the company to really do that too often from this from my experience over the last year or so it's really been like LG that does that they yeah they bring in the sponsorships from all of these like super cartoony characters and they're the ones who made that one phone that it goes into a sleeve that has a face on it and then you can like pop it up or something like hey I just had like an image in my head of like them getting like cuz you know they're like Japanese coming getting like like an anime character like Ash Ketchum from Pokemon like I choose you LG my lg phone again that's just so sad I do have to mentioned that they never be awesome in a way if he was here but Mathew Benson's one of our writers he lives in Japan he's lived there for like eight years I believe something along that line and actually he was talking about Sony the other day and even in their home market I think that they're losing a little bit of of interest though you know cuz he was talking about how he doesn't see as many Sony's as he used to and that's just one man's perspective obviously but you know we were kind of talking about that he said that you could see that even at home Sony is hurting in the mobile division it's not just the Western markets okay well you mentioned that even at home they might be losing a little bit of their foothold what what exactly do you think would have been the reason why and and I know we were going around talking about the fact that they may not have evolved they don't have much availability but is Sony basically here's my question is is Sony basically the old mand and the old man in the market that's starting to be bogged down by all these hip new companies that are coming out like the oneplus ones of the world or are they getting it are they getting inundated with people Samsung and LG putting out like nine different versions of their flagship phone um you know I don't think I would look at it as like an old man in a young man's world kind of thing I would look at it is like the the kid who can't swim at the swim party like you know Sony has had like one foot in the pool and one foot out of the pool for all these years now or like yeah you know what we're gonna make this huge awesome flagship phone but then we're not really gonna do a lot with it you know we're not gonna make it overly available we're gonna make it super expensive and you know we're gonna see how long this obviously winning strategy holds out and you know while Samsung and you know HTC and you know even ACC's losing all you know they were losing all that money for so long even they were like you know what screw this I'm jumping it all the way to the pool let's do the HTC One m7 let's release HTC Zoe to the Google Play Store let's do some good stuff with our mobile you know and release the the walk because before the HTC One m7 HTC had the exact same problem where they didn't have phones available in all the carriers it wasn't the same phone it was like the HTC uh it was a she said one like MX or something like that on AT&T and then it was the Evo LTE on Sprint and then it was like it's the sensation on t-mobile is they were all over the place with this stuff and then they buckled down and said no we're gonna do this right HTC One on every carrier HTC One worldwide and now that's a brand that they're building on and Sony already has the brand to build on but they don't you know if they just their one foot in the pool one foot out of the pool like you know we wanted but no we know we don't yeah you know we kind of know you know we don't now they're like you know what no we don't we're gonna get out of the pool now so but something else I wanted to bring up real quick is uh they've also they've had like a lot of potential to do that flashy stuff the grush II was talking about earlier because they did the the PlayStation thing on phones right like the PlayStation Store on phones and like you know they were like all ready to create things we're gonna let you stream old PlayStation games to your phone like like you can with the PS Vita and the PSP like we can get old games and play them on your phone and then that never happened and you know there was supposed to be I remember seeing a demo at one point someone playing The Last of Us on a on a phone well that might have been remote play yeah the remote play whatever became of that like that never came to fruition I mean it's not is it's not like Nvidia shield is doing what their grid where they're making you know like lots of big names it's available right now you know well that might be true but the thing is the grid is a streaming service while the remote play requires you to have a PlayStation 4 which I do and I will say remote play is pretty freakin awesome Oh in that case I was not talking about remote play oh but uh yeah the PlayStation Store on Android has largely been sort of swept under the rug at least from what I could tell from the from from the last two iterations of Xperia you don't really get any games that you would recognize from PlayStation on there you kind of get off shoot android games that you would find at the fifth page of the games page on the Play Store yeah exactly like that they didn't pay attention to this feature and now it's a piece of junk and they wasted a bunch of money and time on it and I'm sure that's something that was in that business meeting like you know what the place you know we're not doing anything with this store that we have on Android let's just shut down the mobile division but the other thing I wanted to talk about really really quick I'm sorry guys was walkman how the hell have they not been cashing in on that I mean that's something that old people and young people like from you know 15 year old hipsters to 60 Oh everybody knows the Walkman name and what did they do with it they had this huge artists own e Walkman smartphone instantly recognizable worldwide what I do they make it a freakin music app and it doesn't do anything important yes what the Sony Walkman app is like that they could have done so much with it cuz you know theythey was partnered with a Spotify right for their PlayStation Music in a couple of weeks ago why not call that like you know Sony Walkman music service and put it on the phones too and like give people something to like like oh she said you know there was no wow factor there and that's all of their attempts to create a wow factor we're just so mild and tame and not wowie at all so that's that's something else I think probably contributed to it too is just you know like they have these awesome names in these PlayStation Walkman and what do they do you know when they've tried to bring it to mobile they screwed it up Royall and now it all sucks hashtag wowie as we're going to use sometimes in the future Gretchen didn't you guys when we all won we all went to CES didn't you guys get a look at a Walkman iteration when you were at the Sony booth yeah there is a Walkman it's like $1,000 what issues yes looks like a thousand dollars I have some I don't know off the top my head but I was like a really advanced like audio quality that makes it like super awesome is all I know I don't know you know I'm not super into sound that way I know basic stuff Oh a nice tag wowie the basic idea of that guy is that it can play 192 kilobit flatting files so a high res audio oh ok so nothing like nothing for like entertaining information because I did not I remember writing about well you wrote about it that's why I got the write about it yeah you write about it the guy who saw it's just like okay and then I saw oh you know how CES is I mean those who haven't been there obviously are all most of our audience or all of our audience I mean it's so crazy you have so much going on you'd you don't have time to like fully absorb things just like the highlights yeah for sure you know okay well so there is a Walkman iteration but I guess they're making it more of like a boutique brand in a way like yeah it is it's supposed to be the best of the music experience like he said you know and it's cool but I don't see it anyone paying it's $1,200 I just looked it up dude who's gonna buy that and it has jelly bean justjust just saying oh my god those Lamborghini phones are like $2,000 phones runs Gingerbread like I've actually seen and held the Darcy and I when we went to China Rose a few weeks ago I we actually went to one of the electronic stores in the airport and they had the Lamborghini phone right there and I held it in my hand I don't want to hold it anymore like it's it's a weird-looking phone they put way too much into it anyway okay I love that we brought up walk because I actually want to put this question out there and we're I already mentioned that I was gonna ask this question so Jo like moaned first I can oh groaned for assessment for a second they're like oh I'm not gonna have too much to say about so I'll let you answer it first what Sony products do you have like if we're going way it past mobile now Sony is a huge company that has their foot in so many different doors there's got to be at least one kind of Sony device in our houses or that we use and apparently drill may not have one is that true yeah you know not a damn one you do I do what do you what are you thinking psy buddy your piece right the PSP that's right I have a used PSP from 2005 that's the letter to account you're right I apologize I have one Sony device josh is a PSP it is green what's the lesson is it what's the last time you played that thing dude like three days ago well really what are you playing on your PSP Final Fantasy 9 dude like I've been trying to beat it but the last boss is cheap and stupid so apparently I know what Sony products that you have and you don't like think of PSP Sony products like you think that's part of the problem is that they yeah and you know not to go back for where we're at but you know I stopped my wow factor and then you mentioned the PlayStation brand I just feel like they kind of stepped their toes into all of these things but they don't go far enough I mean what's Josh you probably know that what's the name of the streaming service that they have on the ps4 instead I think now on the Vita - I haven't uploaded the update but the streaming service they have now for like ps3 games and stuff well it's pretty much from the PlayStation Store and and they're saying the Civic name for it that was was a PlayStation now is that the one yeah plus like it could be that yeah it's anyway I'm not exactly what you guys are talking about is what I was talking about earlier when you guys thought I was talking about remote play yeah it should be I agree with you talking about that what you're talking about now is what I was talking about yeah leveraging leveraging that on mobile would be a huge deal a huge win that's the kind of thing I'm kind of tummo as Sony's been very you know you were talking before the show about Sony and Sony has been super progressive over the years I mean it's not like they've always been this way I mean Walkmans they Betamax which obviously didn't succeed but hey still progressive awesome man Betamax was better than VHS I'm just saying that now I'm sorry VHS sucked anyway on the point you know they have all these great technologies but for some reason they just when it came to mobile they didn't get aggressive enough with it Oh see that's the reason why I think of Sonja is the old man in the young person's game because they came into this this industry where we pretty much knew what we were going to get you know in smartphones you're gonna get a good processor or in a flagship that is you're gonna get a good processor you're gonna get a particular screen you should have a good camera experience and sony has been doing that for a long time in the feature phone category what there were so many ericsson switch i yeah freakin loved but once they jumped into smartphones it was kind of already established meanwhile in all these other markets that they have like Betamax DVD blu-ray PlayStation they were pioneers because they thought out they they thought outside the box and fulfilled a need that people wanted that wasn't there yet that's why I think they are the old man in the young person's game because the smartphone industry has been established for a while now and Sony just gives us exactly what would they know we need but maybe they don't go too far and I don't know it to me that's a benefit like I would look to Sony as the brand that I go to one I just want the essentials a micro SD card slot really good build quality a nice screen especially after they enhanced it and a really good processor but I don't know maybe our users really need something flashy like you were saying earlier well yeah I have a quick question for you guys real quick when you look at all of the other places they compete you know who are their competitors like you look at the PlayStation brand who are their major console competitors like what Nintendo and Xbox right yeah and then like you look at um you know I Betamax and DVD and blu-ray and all that stuff who was their big competitor like can you guys name their competitors and in those other areas where they excelled a whole bunch laserdisc exactly and then like you know you look at their competitors in the smartphone world and in the laptop works I know Joshy wanted to transition to this eventually yeah but you know you look at this the Sony Vaio and then like their mo who are their competitors here like freaking everyone yeah that's this one I'm you know it on the laptop side you got like dell and alienware and uh Asus Asus and then Asus raagh which is like a whole different thing that they do and then smartphones you Samsung HTC you know LG whoever whatever Google's doing with whoever they're doing it with you know Asus you know they have a whole bunch of competition you guys think it's like it could be likely that uh like that the market is progressing too fast for them to have an original idea and move through because you know you look at like you know the Walkman brand that they tried to bring that could have been seriously revolutionary but then you know other companies beat them to it and then you know you look at you know the PlayStation streaming and then you know Nvidia kind of beat him to it with grid you know it's like hey do you think the competition could be moving too fast as opposed to them being too timid well that's I'm saying I think there are two met there's too much competition and I think that I think that was my main point I mean maybe my old man in algae wasn't necessarily correct when I was trying to describe it but that's exactly what you're saying right now exactly what I'm thinking you know there in the market that has already been so inundated with all these other companies that they just can't really stay afloat and now I'm back I was an algae but you know we uh one thing we're not even thinking about it's why I mean think about it why why do they let it get there Sony was a king why was if they were entered early bike back during the htc you know the the g1 era and stuff you know uh they could have they could have you know ran the show uh why didn't they uh and I think it comes well I think it comes down to the fact that you guys we were talking about all these great things that they've done and all these innovative things they've done Sony's everywhere they have compared to even some of these other companies yeah I don't know wrong Samsung does a lot of stuff too but Sony has done so much were they really was was mobile an afterthought I think that's what it comes down to uh it was an afterthought I think I think and I the time they realized that it shouldn't be an afterthought I think it was too late you know which is kind of my I'd you know me going back to the whole I thought they were slow to evolve I think that's really what I was trying to get I couldn't think of it at the time is that they were they were slow to evolve in mobile but not elsewhere and the reason was because they were focused on elsewhere they were focused on you know the PlayStation brand they were folk Don expanding the bravia you know lines for the four monitors and you know televisions and I think that they they didn't realize the potential of mobile maybe until it was too late you know that's just a speculation but if you think about it would make sense and you know once you get behind it's hard to catch up yeah and they're early phones were not that good either no as well say think that you know that like early um pretty much anybody else you know it's a bad hardware not really good software and then they finally came out with the Xperia brand like what just a few years ago yeah after after smartphones like Josh said had become a thing did yeah Joe did you have those classic Sony phones but from back in the day the Erickson's know it was one of the things I always wanted one because the design was always really nice but again they were never on the carrier I was on so I know I won but I remember the specs weren't that good I remember like they were being compared at the same levels like the old lg optimus phones yeah where they started you before they did the G thing where it was like mid-range low range you know mid-range specs you know regular prices but I don't remember like them ever being like considered along with like the HTC EVO 4G or the or the Moto Droid or you know those other big-name phones I don't remember Sony ever being a part of that conversation but I do remember Sony being there somewhere hmm okay oh speaking of classic Sony yeah um I may have not had an Ericsson you know I told you I didn't get into the phones you know I did have though and I wonder if any of you I'm a little bit older but not a lot older than me I wonder if any of you else had it a Sony CLE eh I don't think yeah yeah I had a CLIA um I think the model was I don't even remember it's been a while uh I ran on Palm OS 3.5 I think originally so it was like 2001 I think with the T series that sounds right to me anyway uh and I thought they were great back then you know and it's Sony's done almost everything Sony's done its bit I've been a huge Sony fan for a long time but you know we were talking about how much Sony products you own I really own very little now outside of the PlayStation brand I own nothing outside of PlayStation really no okay and I used to I used to have Sony TVs everywhere I used to have I don't know I think Sony's kind of faded from my mind there's just so many other options now ya see though yeah yeah but that's what we're gonna keep going back to um I wanna hear from feisty like what what what Sony products do you have cuz there's a quicker the reason that I wanted to go through all of this is because we're gonna see where do they have successes in other fields and maybe a little bit later we'll see if they can apply that to the mobile space and we'll pontificate on that but firstly uh how much Sony do you have in your house well just like the other guys but talking about the Sony devices in my house is a trip down memory lane Sony VCR it's a great VCR it's 15 years old it still works wonderfully wait are you still using it today like well it turns on once a year just for the sake of turning it on to see if it still works but but yes it's still hooked up it's my clock what's a year I try and set it yes I just imagine like feisty living room in the middle of the night just a blinking midnight clock it's part of a setup I'm too lazy like it out while you're talking about soneul you know I have uh I have a Betamax player but it's not hooked up but I do have it in the box somewhere in my basement nice yeah well hook it up and let us know how it goes I'm sure it might work I don't know I haven't used it like wasn't that wasn't the controller like wired to the thing or or my the old one yeah some of them were yeah I can't remember I think mine I haven't brought it out and so long I do have a via you know I don't he's not the only one I do ever VCR still I just don't use it it's in the basement and it is hooked it is hooked up to my basement TV though oh well yeah go ahead so yeah so I mean going back up but Sony was really and and this goes to our previous question as well kind of what went went wrong and and how things are coming along you know when I was growing up Sony was the company to beat you know if you wanted to the best products the most premium devices out there you saw it for Sony and you know I got up into my teenage years later in the teenage years early 20s when I started working have some real money to start spending on on you know whatever I wanted I went stereo shopping TV shopping car stereo shopping you know phone shopping all of these things and you know I touched each of these Sony devices because and that was my first stop because you know that's the way to go you get Sony that's the best and then I found that Yamaha made a better car stereo and well again Yamaha made a better house stereo and and you know Samsung for example makes a better TV or you know these are just experiences for the few devices that I touched but what I really found and my point here is that you know Sony was that the fact owed top a line but they weren't you know they were depicted as the top but when it really came to touch into the devices as nice as they were as premium as they looked they just that they weren't the best so I for me I kind of lost trust in the brand in that front of course then on the word trust you can come to more recent times and they have so many outages in their you know their own networks and the movie side and the gaming thing I think Trust really is it is lost with this company that's an excellent that yeah I didn't even think of that yeah I agree I really didn't even with the hacks and everything like that like you know who's you know oh wow the hacks I didn't know we were going to jump into that their name has been also dragged through the mud it's you know it's not just the hardware stuff just the Sony name yeah Sony has been the subject of so much embarrassment over the last couple of years well the it's funny that we're mentioning the Sony Pictures wing I just realized when was the last time I watched a Sony Pictures movie and I actually thoroughly enjoyed it sure as hell wasn't the interview holy crap or or the new Spider Man I didn't see if I heard it wasn't that good so I owe the interview you mean no the spider did he was Spider Man well they were both they were both pretty terrible so I never got it I will say I will say okay very very much a tangent but you know as much as Jo doesn't like the interview I laughed that's the laugh I never saw it hmm but yeah I mean it's interesting that you mentioned like the lack of trust I I don't feel like I've lost that I guess I mean okay here we go Joseph and boy like no Joe's gonna be like mr. hipster man again like I grew up with Sony and I remember I I'm a very nostalgic kind of person and I absolutely adore what they did back then and I always look back with very fond memories like the Sony Ericsson Bryant I had the Sony Ericsson t610 there's T 619 the the the the first Walkman phone the W 800 and then when they upgraded it to the slider Edition which was amazing the 850 and I would listen to music on those those things were like my lifeline because music really meant a lot to me back then still does but I mean back then let's see we had a Sony big-screen TV the old fat models that had to come with the stand and I remember those yeah yeah and we had that forever and PlayStation 2 that was my first foray and sort of like console gaming me like real console gaming because the one I had before that was Nintendo and then I stuck with mobile after that wow I must be way older that I thought when was that was that crushing I said I must be older than I thought PlayStation 2 what's your first major foray into I know I'm sitting here like NES SNES oh my goodness I'm more hipster than Josh right now well actually know what you just remind to me I did have an n64 my bad I didn't have an n64 before that but but they the earliest one that I had was a Nintendo and then Gameboy became my like my ecosystem after that okay so you're not completely yeah I'm not hopeless I do regret my I my Nintendo is hooked up in my bedroom right now not regular Nintendo well I do regret not have a pretend oh I do regret not having a Super Nintendo I will say that much I never ever owned one but yeah it was a Nintendo then mold than portable gaming and then and 64 and and PlayStation 2 after that my god you lived a deprived life I don't know how I could deal with that my Super Nintendo I said I I still bust it out from time to time yeah you know I think Super Mario RPG legend of the seven stars pal yes so it was made by Square and it was the last collaboration before they had a falling out basically mmm yeah and it was talking to March anyway well well yeah but that was a long time later and yeah I it's absolutely my favorite game I've played that game so many times over the years and I know I'm an adult now so I should probably past Mario the heck now uh-huh well my favorite my favorite video game character of all time is Mega Man X and I think I've made that very clear over the last couple years but yeah well so I had bad and then I moved to the PlayStation 3 obviously and now we have a PlayStation 4 my Bluetooth extra bass like large form factor headphones or Sony and you know I I don't know I still have the faith in them I understand where there are some some caveats with their products like for example the Bravia TVs they really really up the the refresh rate on those with their software so much that movement on those TVs looks absolutely fake like it's weird how they do that yeah great and then the PlayStation 4 has its own somewhat issues online gaming is not the best for it the PlayStation 3 look like a piece of crap I'm just gonna say that out right now I didn't think that design wise the PlayStation 3 looked good at all really yeah it was like this weird bloated mess like I said I thought it look like well did you have the original yeah I did see this I have the sliver model Oh got it Joe's overlooked not the one that looks like the George Foreman grill yeah so I mean I I don't know I still love Sony and it pains me to see that mobile is not gonna be a big like like future for them I suppose that's what they're thinking but because some and so much of what they've made on aside from just mobile has been so great and and in my opinion continues to be so so you do have a ps4 yeah I do oh yeah that's right what are you playing right now nothing it's uh I bought Dragon Age Inquisition a while ago and I and then I got far into it and then I stopped and then I restarted and I just finished it finally oh nice oh but said since then nothing I want to get the new infamous because infamous is absolute my favorite series of all time now that getting second son right that one's on that one's on sale not good no no that one good that one's usually on sale these days so it shouldn't be that hard to get yeah I need to buy it because I love to the first the first two mmm and see and I think I think Joe made a perfect point earlier that the PlayStation brand doesn't have a whole lot of competition compared to the mobile brand and that's why we're able to talk about it at length like this you know but they I mean they they have throughout history I mean even when they got started I mean you know I I think that you know but I I as far as the trust thing that Joe mentioned I still have trust in parts of Sony that was fine I can ignore me feisty I am sorry he's always like just the moment he jumps in it's always like there's just something insightful I know exactly he's over there watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on his VHS player my favorite part yeah eyesores trust I I no longer buy Sony TVs because to me so many TVs were the best and then kind of like what Feist did mention yeah that they were the best and then I started to realize you know they aren't necessarily the best I just thought they were the best and I think there was a point where Sony did lose some of its quality a certain aspects but are they are they not up there though like maybe we don't say they're the best but can we say they are still one of top five but at one point I would consider them the best now I would say LG is what I all my TV's are LG not everyone likes LG I think LG's TVs are awesome Samsung is pretty high up there actually which I didn't even know this is looking at stuff the highest rated for satisfaction its Panasonic actually when it comes to TVs okay they see they know anyone who owns the Panasonic TV but I do like Panasonic now if you were gonna call me a fanboy for any company it would definitely have to be Panasonic so I'm just yeah I'm gonna hold my tongue right now on the I own a Toughbook in the 90s nice loved it so I want to say quick things on this one I want to make a golf reference I think of Sony as like par for the course and that seems to be their target you know and when you go play golf E you're not shooting for par you want to do better but you know they seem to be happy with with par and then Panasonic is mentioned and you know they're kind of the opposite for me you know growing up Panasonic was kind of considered one of the lower rung guys but the truth is they've got some great gear yeah the opposite was saying about Sony do you guys think that duh that Sony has been kind of living off his legacy is that part of the problem if they knew that they've know they built this big legacy and they've just been kind of coasting on it I'm gonna counter your question with another question before when because like we think of Sony like all the great things that Sony did you guys noticed yet that like all of most of Sony's biggest accomplishments happened before everyone had the Internet and could like go like explore other products like it's stupid or not because like you think like oh yeah you know the PlayStation 1 was awesome and the Walkman was awesome it's like and then the internet came now everything sucks like you know do you think it's like just people were able to get online like you know go get cheaper electronics from other places because like those other places didn't have the money to you know specifically distribute to regions that they didn't have before like I'm with feisty like when I was a kid Panasonic was like oh you have Panasonic when you live in a trailer park to like oh it was all word of mouth like there it wasn't like something like you go and look at the reviewers and like you know you go to I'm sorry the verge and like see a Panasonic review and see the reviewer be like lol do you live in a trailer park now you know if you go and you see these reviews for Panasonic and they're actually like really good stuff and like well how come I thought that way when I was a kid because that's just what people told you but now we have the Internet and people can pull a much larger and in some cases a much more qualified group of people to tell us exactly how good or bad these products are and maybe maybe I'm gonna get blasted for this I know it may be somebody was a little overrated back then it it's on the moment just that's exactly what I was saying good you know they were I think I think the company to beat but the products weren't there were excellent products but they weren't the best they didn't I say that they were the apple of the that they were the alternative Apple so there we go I'm just happy that Joe made my old man Michael bad analogy make perfect sense man I can make all analogies work just shoot them out there I'll eventually do it nice we've danced around so many topics this might be my favorite episode so far yeah we've kind of we're everywhere with this particular topic but that's not a bad thing I mean I think we all have long histories with Sony I mean that you have to say I mean who hasn't used a Sony product I mean maybe you don't have a pal but I mean all of us have used probably multiple Sony brother I was very Knicks fan boy growing up dude PlayStation 1 & 2 were my crack and then they dropped the exclusivity and I went over to Xbox but I do two Final Fantasy we're still PlayStation only I would own weight more PlayStation things like for sure here's a here's the level of my commitment to Sony at one point I owned a minidisc player oh my god I got the hipster crown and mail it to crushy you could walk in with all of like the 1980s chucks references you want Grusha wins week I thought it was great I you know I I suppose like men mp3 suck this is so much better quality I am a minidisc Claire they're awesome I can record things off the radio with this model I can yeah it was it was like a hundred you listen to the radio it was it was do it to be honest the other day I was cleaning though as going through some boxes in the basement and I found a bunch of mini discs that's like I think he's going the trash oh my god moped things you don't want to admit that you owned the Big Bang Theory wait Sheldon's like you're gonna regret buying that iPod when the Zune comes out like that's what your story just reminded me which I will say I went zoom when it came out I like all dude me too I had a Zune yeah I just bought a Nokia Windows Phone because I wanted another Zune should we bring this back to separately that we are coming up on our last about 15 minutes of the podcast which brings me to the final question we have talked about very fondly at least of our memories of Sony and of the various products I think I might have the most Sony products that I'm actually still using now so knowing what they were able to do with these other sort of industries is there anything that they could take from there or maybe is there anything they can do better in mobile that might make them bounce back a little bit why don't we start off with rushy wow factor I said it like five times you know - tag wowie hashtag wow we met we kind of touched on some of this PlayStation branding they could do a lot more with that uh but you know even just I don't even know that's that that they need to take anything from what they already have they just need to realize that it is a different category and that things that may have worked in our other categories don't work with mobile mmm you know and I think maybe that's the problem they've tried to apply HAP you know not fully really kind of you know like with the PlayStation thing oh here's what we're gonna do guys here's a playstation phone Xperia Play will be bla but they didn't really do a lot with it and I think that they just haven't had a clear direction with mobile I mean yes they've had a clear design and I didn't you know I think they have a good design language I said it was getting a little boring you know I stand by that but there's a lot of people who like it and I still say that their phones look sexy they just uh and so I think the design language is good and I think that it's just that they haven't done anything to really shake things up and you know that you said that Josh you said you know there's a market for a back to basic I think there probably is but are they doing enough to market that more you know to market that angle mm um I think they're trying to push this onto so many fans and I don't think they're doing enough to to make Sony fans care I think that probably would be my answer is like they need to just reach out more I mean having availability across the board is not necessarily something that you need in order to be successful then we look at all these Chinese brands who kind of stick to their own markets you know and but if they are going to have at least a phone here I mean z3 VZ 3 or Z 2 s or whatever the the versions were that we're on the various carriers t-mobile and Verizon in particular then yeah maybe they should just start I want to see Sony Xperia commercials on my TV you know and I want to see marketing us they used to have Sony Ericsson commercials all the time yeah that's true yeah they were a bigger deal oh they were yeah for sure and I think that that would be probably the first place to start that something's just probably answer that's that's my big thing you know because we're seeing PlayStation freaking commercials like every day you know greatness awaits and stuff like that so no well yeah has anyone here besides the internet seen any kind of advertisement magazine and billboard anything for Sony oh yeah for if they're Bobo for the mobile for mobile for mobile no not in America I have not I have not and I think that's part of the problem now you know we're all we're all from you know well feisty is Canadian technically but we're all from the you know North America or where we live here anyway as I think feisty out of the call knocking we represent you know a certain angle that may not be accurate I mean you know like we were talking with a Android one it's accurate to our markets but I mean OTT you know some people who are listening this I'd be like well that's not true here and you know wherever they're at and but just from our perspective Sony could be doing more here but what about at home I mean cuz like I said I think that it's even leaning in in Japan so where Sony has historically had a lot of you know weight a lot of clout so we need to kind of figure out what are they doing wrong I mean are they're not advertising they're either obviously none of us can answer that because we're not in Japan but I'm sure there's a feeling somewhere yeah and I don't believe that Sony should give up I don't think they should sell the division I don't think they should have sold their PC division personally but because I was a big fan of I had several values and I was a huge fan of two laptops I mean they used to be awesome I mean when I was even in college I mean vaio was you know Mac wasn't hipster cool yet it was vaio you know that was the hipster thing back then you know all the hipster types were going for the BIOS back then yes I'm old that makes it cool well I know logo was kind of cool too you know yeah I did they had the cool the cool netbooks like instead of just a boring looking netbooks they had these like really like thin like ultra wide weird ones and I remember thinking they were almost awesome looking things ever because you know netbooks were awesome apparently for a little while I have a specific angle that I actually want to ask feisty about and I'm gonna ask you last so I I I wanted to throw it over to Joe do what do you think that that Sony can do better and you're the one that doesn't even have much Sony in your house all right so here's the thing like and this is something that has been kind of like underlined you know obviously I think that the biggest problem is availability yeah and it's not because it's not just like you know in North America because the carriers don't have it and I'm angry because the z1s on t-mobile sucked compared to the zero and I know that's yeah but uh it's something it's I gave me a second I'm articulating this in my brain right now all right so crush adjust said that you know he saw those little netbooks and he said they were the coolest little things ever crush you did you own one no why I wanted to buy one uh they were too expensive right so it was like I remember they were like they were like seven or eight hundred dollars netbooks were like three or four hundred dollars exactly I was some crappy Dell right and like you know you look at that and that's the reason why I say that they should be available on carriers because carriers can take that you know because these are all $700 phones anyway there's no different than the Samsung and HTC or Apple you know but they all you know they're all doing really well because they're on carriers and carriers can subsidize those things turn expensive phones into cheap phones and allow more people to buy them and that's why I think that availability is super important and you know even with their you know that's the thing that the vibe that I get with Sony phones is man that phone looks so great god I wish I could buy one and like it that that is the big point the the the huge thing that I hear all over the place is man that phone is really nice I wish I could get one like my friend bought a UH the z3 seed that I mentioned earlier the z3 compact and he bought it used on swap ax and I believe it's like an international version or something like that mm-hmm and uh you know it's just it's just one of those things they're just not around you know people look at it and go even if it we're on commercials people be like man I really want to buy that phone now where do I get it and the answer is cricket cricket cricket cricket cuz no one knows where to get it cuz it's not available anywhere well you know I mean you can you can go to Sony's website and buy them yeah but then but then it's hundred dollars you know of course well you know of course there is the the z3 on t-mobile and there is the z3v on Verizon so there is availability but are they advertised well I don't know why better yeah I think oh they go hand-in-hand I do feel like uh and and Joe brings up a very good point I think in our history of ever having Sony products there's never been a budget Sony product ever it's well you you you got the impression that your which is kind of what Apple does you get the impression that it's worth them because it's the best even if it's not really in the nest it's we've been told it's the best and you know even back then I have a I have a fond memory of selling stuff too but was it necessarily the best no there were other good stuff but we were conditioned to it it was the brand that we knew to trust and I still think Sony builds good products in many ways ah but it came down to the fact that you know we were willing to pay that amount but I think consumers and the internet probably has contributed to that consumers aren't willing to pay that anymore they would rather you know this might only last me four years is that you know if it's a TV or whatever instead of seven or but that's fine I just saved $400 yeah I guess so you know and I think and I guess you know we could not to go political but we could you know blame the economy hunt some of it too I said sure you know so it's good that you mentioned it the way that you did aggress you because feisty you mentioned right before our podcast we were sort of discussing how we were going to tackle the topic that you brought a band droid TV and what I wanted to put out there was you can all you can of course go into what you think Sony can do better for their mobile division but I just wanted to pose this idea if Sony of CES made it clear that they're gonna go all-in with Android TV for all of their bravia sets and this is just pretty much pure Android TV we're looking at they put they just injected Google's own operating system and interface into their TVs do you think that could be a route that they would take with mobile what if they went all-in with Google and just made Android stock Android what they do and kind of kind of cut their losses cut their costs when it comes to their proprietary operating system do you think that going all-in with Android on their experience might help that is a tough one to answer it certainly I think it would help a lot if they also introduced lower end phones as long as they're gonna continue to to promote themselves as as having premium phones I think they have to have their own OS to match that premium nature you can I mean that all of the budget phones and sorry I'm gonna make some generalizations here but the budget phones run pure Android the premium phones run a premium experience Android so I guess the philosophy from the TV division probably wouldn't help the mobile division you think again I'll speak to the hardware here I there's definitely room for them to grow I mean we look at Samsung over the last three four years that they skyrocketed to the top because they had the gamut of devices they had low-end stuff that you know could make the bulk of their sales and then they had the high-end stuff that you know brought up the the appeal of the line hmm but again the sales came from the lower the mid-range device now of course the the bigger device is sold as well but I mean the bulk of their income came from the lower devices and Sony just doesn't have those so that you know borrowing from the Android TV going to appear Android there's room but not on their current hardware platforms and this speaks so sorry go on so feisty I have a question for you yeah um the Moto X is not premium to you at all it's it's not the new Moto X hardware wise yes with its decent specs with its metallic edging with its customization leather back I consider that pretty premium I'm not trying well we don't write an exactly stock Android either there's a moto moto skin whoa just because the skin is thin doesn't mean it's not there I have to say I've got the Google Play edition Moto G and the Motorola software I'm missing I hate missing it I can't even install it and so even if it is thin like joe says it is missing and yeah it's still basically stock with it also there's no Nexus warriors all like in the listening audience before anybody like blows up premium does not mean better folks premium means like bonus extra you know stuff more necessarily yeah more expensive exactly it does not mean better so you know is if we're not saying that like you know that the the Sony UI or the TouchWiz is better but it is in fact premium by definition sorry go ahead fine then the Nexus then the Nexus 6 isn't premium by this definition no no but even though it has metallic you know the design and it's I don't know I guess I feel like stock doesn't have anything do with it and I I think that that was kind of my point earlier is that I think that Sony hasn't lot brought a lot of extras to its skin uh and so it's closer to stock but it still looks different so the purists the people who like Nexus myself it's not necessarily what they want and it's not necessarily what people who are looking for you know advanced features want either and so I absolutely am an add a different side of you I think that they could benefit completely from not going pure stock but going to a really really light skinned the same icon same design just a few extra apps a real PlayStation app that has real streaming and just go to the basically scale down their software and focus on the things that Sony could do well with oh yeah better PlayStation branding better a better walkman music app that kind of stuff all right did you have anything else you want to add feisty before yes absolutely no no no problem I mean that's a great point of view where I guess Android is at that point now where the OS versus you know the pure versus the skins is you know it's blurring that line of of the lower end versus the higher Android which is good I like that and thank you good rebuttal but going back to our actual question of today is you know part of it was that then Sony wants to take less risks and they want to focus on the markets where they think they'll see growth you know the thing is for me is I think they can make that growth if they seek it out don't look for the markets where they can make growth just go out there and make it and that goes to specifically for mobile I mean they're they're focusing on one type two kind of the premium device where they think that can make an impact where really they just need to go all-in spend money to make money if you will and just you know do it own it they own PlayStation they've you know they'll go upside down on that brand if they had to it's theirs they own it and they're doing great in the in the in the gaming market you know they're hesitant they need to take as opposed to them saying they want to take less risks I think that to take more risks and that will help them out overall in any division not just mobile all right great well I think that is a pretty good note to go ahead and start closing off our show here I'll go ahead and go into my little intro outro I should say remember to listen to the Friday debate podcast every single week on of course Friday using all of the different applications that you used to access the podcast channels you have iTunes stitcher and like I said before pocket casts and I want to thank our co-hosts once again Joseph in the Andrew crush and Jonathan Feist today we talked about Sony and where things may have gotten a little sour with their mobile division because it's become clear that Sony is not going to as they said take risks as much anymore in the mobile division which for a couple of us may have made us a little bit sad or it made it made sense to a couple of us me and personally I thought that I always have faith in Sony and personally I do call I do I do take a little bit of sadness from that particular piece of news but we went at length here and we also kind of went on tangent off tangent for a little bit in the middle I hope you guys enjoyed this episode that was certainly the month at the most one I've had on the Friday debate podcast thus far but nonetheless keep it tuned to android authority for our podcast and for all of our content now Joe Andrew Jonathan and myself are all available on social media websites including Google+ and Twitter and if you want to know where those links are you can head over to the Android authority comm page for the Friday debate podcast to find those links easily in the description below the podcast player from there I think that we're good to go this is the Friday debate podcast episode number 5 discussing topics in Android every week once again guys let's go ahead and just sign off as we usually do thank you guys so much for listening and for watching on YouTube and remember to drop us some likes on our videos on our youtube channel subscribe if you haven't already and head over to android authority comm because we are your source for all things Android Android and yeah that was really fun that was really awesome yeah agreed
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