Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Sony is one of the giants of consumer electronics and it has numerous products across different markets. That is why their keynote at CES 2012 was met with great expectation and excitement and for the most part, Sir Howard Stringer and his crew, including an out of place Will Smith (better than Ed Begley's super awkward appearance in Panasonic's keynote) made an impact with the hard to please crowd.
Sony is in a unique position because aside from devices it also manages a large collection of content such a movies, video games, TV shows and other features which it is trying to leverage on its devices. Looks like this year Sony aims to strengthen its ecosystems.
The PS Vita, which is the next generation handheld, now has a Netflix application which means another reason (aside from games and mobile Internet access) for people to consider the new handheld gaming platform.
Sony's Experia line of smartphones continues to improve and now a lot of their HDTV technology as well as solid digital photography capabilities has made it to the smaller screen. The new Sony Xperia Ace was a show standout. Now that Sony bought off Ericsson, the Sony Ericsson name is all but gone and the newer devices will be sporting a Sony logo under the Sony Mobile Communications brand.
While VAIO didn't yield much in terms of releases, there were some interesting concepts in mobile computing from Sony who is always working on unique and even daring products to bring to market.
In terms of SmartTV and Connected TV, Sony has followed Samsung's footsteps in offering users a more intuitive way to navigate the content with a new controller with a built in QWERTY keyboard, of course the Sony Tablet S does all this and more.
Sony's venerable Walkman brand was also revived at the keynote with an Android powered multimedia player for uses who don't need the phone connectivity but want the multimedia features.
There's life beyond 3D, which was still a buzzword at the show but that many agreed was getting old. Let's face it 3D just doesn't measure up and the content isn't there. Sony was touting its 4K sets which have 4 times the resolution of 1080p HDTV and they look amazing.
Things are looking good for Sony going into 2012 and their keynote was polished and well executed and more importantly it was all about exciting and competetive products that look competetive and bring innovation to their respective spaces.