Sony's new Rolly and MYLO II - Defining Niche CE devices

Michael Gartenberg | January 06, 2008, 07:48 PM

Two new things from Sony today at CES.

New version of the MYLO announced at CES today addresses some of the issues of the old product like adding AIM support, but still no way to add applications, still no email client and this still feels like a solution in search of a problem. Still no telephony and an odd combination of features targeted a demographic that seems more keen on iPods and iPhones.

MYLO is still a niche product but not as niche as the other new thing Sony talked about, how the Rolly is coming to the US. Sony's talking about this as a new product category on the order of magnitude of the Walkman introduction. Seriously. Sorry, but I can't see this going anywhere anytime soon in the US as a mainstream product.

Sony seems to have this habit of creating the equivalent of concept cars to market in the consumer electronics world. Like concept cars, these products are designed to capture the imagination but often lack real world practicality and/or mass appeal. Unlike car companies, Sony tends to actually bring these things to market (we've seen this with the CLIE line of PDAs in days gone by as well as with the VAIO line). I suspect there's important learning and features from these two devices will likely make it into other products but hard to see how either one of these in current form can be a mass market success. But perhaps, that's not the point.