Get a Glimpse on Sony’s Plans for Audio Players in 2009

Let’s talk a bit about Audio division, namely its baby Network Walkman that has been bullied pretty much to near death by Apple’s iPod. I know a lot of audiophiles out there who are die-hard Sony devotees pray and hope that Sony still has something up its sleeve to show the world that Walkman is still alive and has a lot of potential. I’d say that thanks to those fans the Walkman business stayed alive in the US even though it was crippled with DRM and MP3s were a big No-No in the Sony Audio division.

Eliot Van Buskirk from the WIRED blog has shed some light on the upcoming Walkman line up for us. In the picture I can see familiar faces of Rick Clancy and Stan Glasgow discussing their plans for that product for 2009. Check out the article below and let us know if you think Walkman has a chance to live on another year…

“At Sony’s annual executive round table in New York on Thursday morning, Sony Electronics’ president and COO Stan Glasgow told reporters gathered there about the company’s forecast for the holiday (grim but not disastrous), how the imploding electronics retail market is affecting Sony and its product roadmap for 2009 and beyond.

There’s still no sign of the iTunes/Zune-style store that Glasgow (seated at the head of the table in the photo to the right) said the company was looking into at this same meeting in 2006. Sony president of consumer sales Jay Vandenbree told Wired.com after the round table that Sony had no plans to launch such a store in the coming year.

Instead, he said, Sony will add “solid” audio feature to their portable hardware, and that the company’s next-generation portable audio designs would feature “stronger integration” with its other products. Sony will likely add stronger WiFi features to its audio-capable portables (the PSP already has WiFi but not the standalone music portables). This woul enable wireless song syncing and streaming within the home and near hotspots. Those devices could borrow technology from Sony mylo. Plus, Glasgow said Sony is adding WiFi syncing to its line of point-and-shoot cameras, so the same could hold true for its portable audio players.

Another wireless feature could be in the works too. Sony was bullish on Bluetooth at the same meeting in 2007, so it Vandenbree’s “integration” could mean the ability to beam music from portable audio devices into more of the company’s home theater receivers, although neither executive touched on Bluetooth during this year’s roundtable.

Vandenbree also told Wired.com after the meeting that Sony’s portable audio players will be “more versatile” in 2009. This could mean support for more audio and video formats in addition to the wireless features mentioned above. Wild speculation: Sony has close ties to Apple on the video side… could he have meant that Sony players will work with Apple’s DRM? Not likely.

Overall, Vandenbree told us to expect new designs, closer integration with other Sony products and more versatility from the company’s upcoming portable audio line-up. But Sony will not announce a major music store/player strategy at the Consumer Electronics Show in January (a plan probably best left abandoned, judging from their first online music store). We look forward to seeing the specifics in January, but this is the Sony portable audio scoop for now.”