Sony Will Use Own Chip for New Handheld
Posted on: Saturday, 19 July 2003, 06:00 CDT
By MAY WONG
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Sony Corp. (SNE) announced the first handheld computer to carry the company's own microprocessor Friday, signaling dissatisfaction with existing chips from others.
Sony's new CLIE personal digital assistant, due to ship in September, will also mark the company's entry into wireless communication.
The new line will be optimized for audio files and video - commercial movies as well as personal clips that Sony thinks people will want to share - while draining as little battery power as possible, said Masanobu Yoshida, president of the company's handheld computing company.
Current Sony CLIEs have Intel microprocessors.
Sony promises smoother video and longer battery life in the new models - 16 hours for continuous playback of music or five hours for video. Performance is to double with an attachable battery pack.
The Japanese consumer electronics giant already plans to make its own chip for its next-generation PlayStation game console.
In wireless technology, the $699 PEG-UX50 model is to feature both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The other model, the $599 PEG-UX40, will have Bluetooth only.
Rival PDAs already have built-in wireless Internet access, but Sony's design is more user friendly, said Todd Kort, an analyst with Gartner Dataquest market research firm.
The device automatically finds and makes wireless connections without a configuration process that other wireless PDAs require.
It also is the first in the United States to have a horizontal screen in a clamshell design, eliminating the need for Web surfers to scroll right-and-left to see a full Web page.
Sony, the No. 3 PDA maker behind Palm and Hewlett-Packard, "breaks a lot of ground here," said Kort, who attended Sony's announcement.
"It's hard to squeeze everything they've done in this small package," he said, holding the magnesium-cased device about the size of a deck of cards. "It's a heck of a job of engineering."
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