With Sony’s new wireless Clie PDAs getting more similar in terms of their specs and capabilities to Sony Ericsson’s smartphones, Ross Rubin wonders whether the two companies are headed for something of a collision. He speculates that Palm’s purchase of Handspring (and by extension, it’s new Treo 600) is going to put even more pressure on Sony to develop it’s own Clie-phones, something that would put them in the awkward position of selling a gadget that very directly competes against its joint-venture with Ericsson. Doing so might be the final nail in the coffin, or give Sony extra incentive to buy out Ericsson’s share of the joint-venture. It’s an open secret that Ericsson wouldn’t mind getting get out of this money-losing partnership anyway.
Either way, given the scope of its business it certainly makes sense for Sony to have its own in-house line of cellphones. But if Sony wants to take the plunge and start competing full-on in the smartphone market, what they really need to do is to start developing some competition for Microsoft’s new Smartphone operating system (confusing, isn’t it?). And the quickest way to do that would be to buy PalmSource to get control of the Palm operating system (this isn’t crazy, Sony Chairman Nobuyuki Idei has already hinted at doing this before; just going with Symbian wouldn’t give Sony the control it likes to have). But not just to build a Clie-phone — they should position the Palm OS as a counterweight to Microsoft’s cellphone OS, and then license it out to other cellphone manufacturers. If Sony does this it almost won’t matter what happens to Sony Ericsson, but you can bet that if the joint-venture is still in business (or wholly-owned by Sony) they’d be the first in line to license Sony’s Palmphone OS.
