Sony Challenges Apple in Streaming of Videos, Music
Sony Challenges Apple in Streaming of Videos, Music
Sony Corp. via Bloomberg
Qriocity, pronounced “curiosity,” will start in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., the Tokyo-based company said yesterday.
Qriocity, pronounced “curiosity,” will start in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., the Tokyo-based company said yesterday. Source: Sony Corp. via Bloomberg
Sony Corp. will start a video- and music-streaming service in five European countries this fall to challenge Apple Inc.’s iTunes store.
Qriocity, pronounced “curiosity,” will start in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., the Tokyo-based company said yesterday. The service will be available via Sony’s Bravia TVs, the PlayStation 3 game console, Blu-ray DVD players and Vaio personal computers.
Qriocity will draw on Sony’s experience with PlayStation Network and its 54 million subscribers, Qriocity to challenge iTunes which has 160 million registered users and the $99 Apple TV set-top box for movie and TV show rentals. Sony’s release was overshadowed by Apple’s same-day debut of social networking for iTunes, multiplayer virtual game rooms and new iPod hardware, said Amir Anvarzadeh, at BGC Partners Inc. in London.
“Sony’s unveiling of its Qriocity digital content platform could have been better timed,” Amir Anvarzadeh, partner at BGC’s Asian equity sales team, wrote in an e-mail. “Potential for Qriocity’s halo effect looks very limited.”
The company needs to adopt Google Inc.’s Android operating system “way beyond smartphones to try to compete with iTunes” and the more than 250,000 applications on Apple’s App Store, Anvarzadeh wrote.
Disney, Fox Deals
Apple TV will rent high-definition TV programs for 99 cents, first-run movies for $4.99 and work with Netflix Inc.’s online service, Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said yesterday. To provide the TV rental service, Apple forged deals with Walt Disney Co.’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox, Jobs said at an event in San Francisco.
Sony’s video-on-demand service has a catalog of hundreds of film titles from studios such as 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Paramount Pictures, according to a statement. The company didn’t give pricing details.
“We are excited to offer our customers high-quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sony’s network-enabled devices,” Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony’s Networked Products & Services Group, in the statement.
Sony rose 0.9 percent to 2,396 yen as of 1:52 p.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average gained 0.5 percent. Apple climbed 3 percent to close at $250.33 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday.
‘Ping,’ Updated IPods
The new iTunes 10 adds a music-focused social network called Ping, which lets users “follow” others, Jobs said. The company also introduced new designs for all its iPods, including a $49 Shuffle with 15 hours of music play and a smaller iPod Nano with a touch pad. The updated iPod Touch has a sharper screen, a front-facing camera, and features that allow video editing and face-to-face chats.
Apple has sold more than 275 million iPods since the product’s debut in 2001, Jobs said. The device has helped drive the popularity of iTunes, which accounted for 28 percent of all U.S. music purchases and 70 percent of all digital sales in the first quarter, according to NPD Group Inc. in Port Washington, New York.
Sony previously offered music downloads through its Connect online music store until the company shuttered the service in March 2008. Users could only access the store from PCs running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software and were limited to playback on Sony devices.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ragnhild Kjetland in Frankfurt at rkjetland@bloomberg.net; Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net
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