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Sony (NYSE: SNE) Electronics, maker of the first portable music device in the Walkman cassette player, has switched course on the format of its latest digital players, which will now support the consumer format of choice: MP3.
Sony's MP3 move is a departure from supporting only its own Atrac format, which is among a number of proprietary alternatives that, while technically superior in some respects, do not offer MP3's portability between home, auto, mobile and other music devices.
At the same time Sony announced it was going to build support for both its own Atrac and the more universal MP3 format, industry researcher IDC reported that MP3 player sales are booming, reinforcing analysts' opinion that MP3's ability to deliver the same digital content on different devices makes it the favorite format of consumers.
Sony's Slow Switch
"MP3 is the ultimate in terms of inter-device compatibility," Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman told TechNewsWorld. "One of the most important things for consumers is portability and transferability and you are lacking in any of those areas with the proprietary formats."
Analysts agreed that Sony made a major mistake by previously announcing it would only support its own, proprietary format. The electronics giant is now indicating that its players will be supporting MP3 from now on.
Goodman said the switch in strategy is Sony's effort to find the fastest and easiest way to meet consumers' demands for interoperability.
"It should have been done from the start," Goodman said. "When you look at a typical user's collection, the vast majority [of files] are MP3."
Gartner (NYSE: IT) research director Mike McGuire said the MP3 support from Sony was an acknowledgement of the popularity of the music format, but added it was "fairly late in coming."
"Really, all it does is get them to some level of parity with the rest of the world," McGuire told TechNewsWorld.
De Facto Default
Although a number of different formats -- Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) WMA, Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) ACC, Sony's Altrac and others -- compete in a variety of digital music devices, support for MP3 is becoming a required ingredient for any successful portable player.
Some would argue Apple's iPod is an exception, but the proprietary-format player is likely to see more competition from MP3- capable devices, according to analysts.
McGuire said that although MP3 is also a format that is popular on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and is vilified by some copyright owners such as the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), it is the most likely candidate to be a standard format.
"There are so many file formats out there," McGuire said. "MP3 is probably going to be the default for a lot of people. This is something content companies are just going to have to live with. The market is going to force interoperability."
Transfer Trumps Tech
Yankee's Goodman said that while other, proprietary formats feature better compression and copyright protection technology, the portability of MP3 is more important to the people who buy players.
Sony's move "just re-affirms the support customers have for MP3,"
Goodman said. "All the others have better compression, but MP3 offers one
thing those formats don't offer and that's cross-device compatibility."
