Sony’s new Vaio Pocket doesn’t do video even though it’s got a 2.2 inch color screen. Instead, Sony fell back to images of album covers and photos. Why? According to CNnet, “I tend to think it’s premature to get into this market in the United States right now, because of a lack of video services,” said Mike Abary, Sony Electronics’ general manager of Vaio marketing.
But in Japan, it’s different. A version that allows video downloads is going to be introduced there shortly. But not in the good old USA. The reason is that the usual downloaded video – movies and TV shows – are just too long according to Ross Rubin, an analyst with NPD Techworld. “But I don’t see consumers having long sessions with these devices.”
So it’s not long movies or TV – it’s short clips and highlights, produced economically for the even smaller screen that is the key to acceptance. As CNet concludes “So service providers will have to be creative to offer video content in a way that is appetizing to potential users.” And this means massive video production to scale to meet this need.