Sony to begin developing drones from Biz / Tech Aug. 27, 2014 - Updated 23:26 UTC-4
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140828_20.html
Officials of Sony say they have begun developing unmanned aerial vehicles commonly known as drones. Sony holds the leading global market share for sensors that work like human eyes. They are used in digital cameras and other devices. Sony wants to expand the use of the technology to drones....
Look promising
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Sony does a lot of innovation and they often "attempt" to leverage their developments into exclusive devices that run counter to already established standards.
Often this has not worked out the way they hoped (monopoly dominating the field).
However, they still do make very many top end consumer products with very high reliability and excellent consumer acceptance, so in spite of their generally misguided attempts at Global Domination they are still a viable enterprise.
Kodak on the other hand was a typical for the US attempt to play catch up in a field they had already dominated.
They made film cameras, and film and processing.
When they finally saw the handwriting on the wall that digital cameras were going to completely take over they did exactly what the American car industry did.
They made crap and charged a premium price for it.
There stuff was 1-2 years behind the Japanese cameras and of lower quality and cost more.
Sort of exactly what the American car manufacturers did when small cars became the "unavoidably" clear as the only way to survive.
Of course they did such a lousy job, they didn't survive either, but the government bailed them out, not so for poor old Kodak.
I worked for NEC while Kodak was introducing those second rate American made digital cameras using our third tier chips (the ones that no Japanese manufacturer was using because they were so so inadequate for that job.
At the time I communicated what I thought of this to my superiors and of course it was met with the contempt shown by superiors everywhere when one of their employees tries to point out a fly in the rational.
Kind of like Challenger.
Best Regards,
Gary
After the beating my NEX-5N took yesterday, I agree with Hugues' comment! Most of the video and all of the audio survived the crash, and the camera still works well.
if the drones they'll build will be as perfect as their Sony NEX line of cameras, I might be interested.
Compared to all other drone makers, Sony is a step ahead technology wise. Everybody else buys components ready made from large manufacturers, Sony make many of them, themselves. When you can design and make rather than accept whats already done you can deliver something great.
Quadzimodo - I agree with you. What I was trying to say is that I was always look at the specs of the electronics Sony was producing. Sony Trinitron was the revolution at the time, having triple the resolution comparing to all other brands was a great success. Although that resolution was far ahead of its time and unfortunately was not used to the fullest until DVDs arrived.
Most of their popular in sales sound systems were lower-end systems while other brands were cheaper and had much better specs. They were selling their four letters rather than technologically advanced systems.
Then, as mentioned above Mini-DVD camcorders. Check their specs and then reliability. My friend came from vacation in England and had 100% corrupt DVDs. I told him not to buy Sony back then - he did not listen and was left with no video memories from the greatest trip he had.
My neighbor bought a Sony computer in 2000 to edit beautiful videos shot by a newly purchased Canon Mini-DV camcorder. We tried to use regular FireWire cable for video transfer - did not work. Had to run back to the store and buy a $65 Sony FireWire cable.
I can dig deeper in my memories. I stopped buying Sony in 1998 when I bought my last Trinitron TV and still staying away until I see something worth buying.
But hey, that's just me. Last time I used a cell phone was in 2002 and have none since then.
Ah yes, you'll just need a Memory Stick adapter to pull the datalogs off.
It could be argued that Kodak might have avoided inventing itself out of existence by diversifying its portfolio of products and services, instead of fading into irrelevance while squandering every single market advantage it had (digital cameras, digital printing, photo sharing). But this is perhaps only easy to say in hindsight.
While Sony has squandered similar opportunities (ipod, iphone, ipad, itunes), the sheer diversity of it's portfolio prevented these seemingly enormous failures from signing the company's death warranty (as the invention of the digital camera by Kodak back in 1975 would eventually do). However, the diverse divisions within Sony that have been so good at compartmentalising damage have introduced their own set of problems and challenges. For example, back in the late nineties and early naughties, when DVDs and MP3s hit the scene, Sony's Mobile Entertainment division was extremely well placed to adopt and support compatibility with these exciting new technologies, and it was already one of the big core players competing in that space (along with Kenwood, Clarion, Pioneer, Alpine) .
Sony were one of the first to provide consumers with a top shelf in-dash AV system offering compatibility with DVDs and compressed music files. However, Sony opted not to offer support for the immensely popular and widely shared MP3 format, likely due in no small part to the fact that one of their sibling divisions was a music label (Sony Music). Sony also chose to region lock all their units, no doubt thanks to the influence of one of it's other siblings (Sony Entertainment). These decisions, unfortunately, did not place Sony Mobile in a very competitive position. Meanwhile, other companies (like JVC), with little concern for the growing trends in file sharing or content syndication rights, were free to respond to market demand and give the people exactly what they wanted (in fact, getting MP3 right when others got it wrong is how JVC got big in car audio).
Mark - It is not always the case that "When profit becomes everything the company is after - that's where we, the customer looses". I can think of at least one (two part) example of where Sony's moral judgement has helped the consumer win. Some have argued that Sony's decision not to support porn contributed to it's failure against JVC's VHS. More recently, it could be argued that Sony's hostility towards this multi-billion dollar industry (bigger than Hollywood) helped to propel it's competitor into the market place and perhaps, ultimately, to put 100s of millions of HD video and gaming consoles out into the market place below their material cost. Perhaps if Sony had no morals, then VHS or HD DVD might not have survived and, by extension, Bob Saget's career might have ended after Full House and Xbox perhaps might not have come into existence (oh, the horror).
Agree with your guys! Weather I want it or not I still use Sony in my GoPros and, I am sure in a few other gadgets.
My point is if company does well (or too well in some cases) - it stops innovating their products and limit our choice of choosing a product.
As mentioned above - there is a very delicate balance in making technology work and profiting from it. When profit becomes everything company is after - that's where we, the consumers lose.
I truly hope Sony will pan-out and become a company on my buying list. So far I feel as they treat me like a fool in many ways (I always check the specs, not just a brand name) and I vote with my money against them by selecting their competitors by the product specs.
Sure Sony is famous for trying to create proprietariness for no particular benefit to anyone - in the end especially themselves.
But they are also famous for building a wide range of exceptionally high quality consumer electronics products that have been and are very successful.
There presence in our multicopter world is a very good one for all of us.
It will lend both a legitimacy and a gravity to our pursuit that even our government and the FAA will find very hard to ignore.
And I am also really interested to see what new things they do come up with.
So I say to Sony, like Amazon - Welcome to the fire.
As much as I love the innovation of Sony, and the resulting products I can relate to the above gripes... Then again I think of what we use as our FPV gear and it is only possible due to the CCD chip that was pioneered by Sony.
There is such a delicate balance of compatibility while still holding one to your intelectual property in many ways few have done this well. Ultimately I think this article shows what we all in this community can agree. The autonomous or drone vehicle market is the next revolution, and as the bigger companies like Sony start to state "Me Too" just confirms that this is happening.
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