[General Topics] vivftp:
Howdy all! I've spent much time pondering where Sony is at for phones, tablets and portable gaming, and where I'd want to eventually see them. With Sony now in full control of the mobile phone divison and greater interaction between the various Sony departments under the new rule of Kaz Hirai, I would hope we'll Sony starting to produce market leading devices if they want to carve out any significant chunk of the market.

This thread is really just for people to voice their thoughts on what type of devices Sony should strive to produce in the coming months/years and what sort of experiences they should give their customers. I'll kick things off with my own list of things I'd like to see. I get that it may just appear the random ramblings of a fanboy, but I figured it's a good a place to start as any :)

- Expand Vita OS to phones and tablets. It is true that in the here and now the Vita OS isn't suitable for phones and tablets, but then again it is a very young OS and is constantly growing. We know it was designed with phone/tablet expandability in mind, so I can see Sony doing this eventually. What would this mean for Sony and Android? Well they don't necessarily have to get out of the Android game, but there's only so much you can do to differentiate yourself when everyone is running the same OS. I'd like to see them have both Android devices and Vita OS devices as that would be the smart play IMO.

It's also true that Sony doesn't have the greatest history in the software department so one has to wonder why I'm saying they should develop their own OS. Quite simply because I've spent a lot of time playing around with the Vita OS and I'm impressed with it so far. If they begin expanding it with phone and tablet use in mind, I think it could pose a serious threat to other mobile OS's. With Microsoft being able to integrate xbox gaming into the Windows mobile platform and the already substantial presence of gaming on iOS and Android, I don't think Sony can afford to not expand upon the Vita OS and carve out their own chunk of the industry.

-Bank on Playstation Mobile and toss everything you can into making it a success. PSM succeeding will be the only way the Vita OS could be expaned to other mobile devices. Sony needs an app ecosystem and PSM is it. I'm not a programmer, but from comments I've ready from people who are programmers, it seems that a lot of them are pleased with the way Sony is handling PSM. While I'm sure there's room for improvement, again it's still in its infancy. In fact, it tehnically hasn't even born yet since it's still in the beta stages.

The fact that PSM also runs on some Android devices makes it even better as you can give those people a taste of the PSM experience and if they want more they can invest in a Vita OS device. The ability to double dip should be a huge benefit here.

-More integration with Playstation. I think Playstation as a whole is Sonys ace up its sleeve. If they can get all PS1 and PSP games working on PS Certified devices, it'll open up a library of hundreds, if not thousands of titles for people to play on the mobile, and add a lot of additional revenue for Sony. Not to mention if you can get them hooked a bit with these smaller games as opposed to the relatively simpler games you find on mobile devices these days, it increases the chances that they might want to invest in the PS3/PS4 whenever it comes out.

-I do like that with their current lineup of phones, Sony is try to to cater to every market segment rather than just focus on high end devices. I'd continue this, although maybe with fewer devices as the 2012 Sony Mobile lineup is pretty substantial.

-One product concept that I'd love to see is the full integration of the phone and the tablet. Sony was already partly there with the Tablet P, but I think they need to see it through to the next step. The idea would be to have a device that folds in half and on the outside would be a normal display just like any modern smart phone. When you want to get off the small screen and onto something bigger, just open it up and inside you'll find a single flexible OLED display the size of your typical tablet screen. We know Sony (and Samsung amongst others) are working on flexible OLEDs and Sony recently announced a 9.9" version, but quite honestly we don't know when they'll be ready to put those in products or if it's flexible enough for this application. If they could make this work though, I think it would be a huge seller. It'll be expensive as hell, for a phone/tablet all in one, I'd be willing to pay more.

-Leverage more tech from their digital imaging division. Sony has their Cybershot T series cameras which really aren't that much thicker than most phones, but has far better quality optics, and even a bit of optical zoom. I'd also want to see a xenon flash of course.

There were rumours going about not long ago about Sony doing exactly this for a fabled Xperia Z, but I think that was just random speculation.