Sony’s sexy pink balls extend smartphone sound
Sony is rightly mounting a competition for a cuter name for the SRS-BTV5, first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and available this month in black, white or pink for $70 (£55).
I like to roll this small audio ball of a wireless speaker in the palm of my hand and pet it like an executive toy, before tucking it away in its string bag for travelling. Read more
Sony teased gamers with details of its next-generation PlayStation 4, expected to launch around Christmas, at an event in New York this week. But with no console to be seen, promises of improved graphics and social gaming features did not appease the concerns of those who worry that the group could be close to losing its last chance at a comeback. Read more
Sony, you big tease. Taking a leaf from Apple’s playbook, the Japanese electronics group has posted a page on its website suggesting that a new Playstation games console is in the offing for 2013.
Sony Computer Entertainment put a page on its website titled Playstation 2013 with a video trailing a mysterious event on February 20 in New York. The page invites users to register for updates and ‘be the first to know’. Read more
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Interesting commentary from around the Web on the tech story that made headlines this week.
The curtain came down on the International Consumer Electronic Show on Friday, bringing an end to the largest event in its history. As expected, the Las Vegas show was filled with TVs, smartphones and computers. But despite the acres of print and online space given to covering the show, there has been no shortage of tech commentators questioning its continued relevance. Read more
Sony is calling its new smartphone, launched at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a ‘super phone’, winding the clock back to the time of super models, super cars and when the Japanese group ruled the high-end electronics market. Daniel Thomas, telecoms correspondent, says the device is grown-up but far from revolutionary. Read more
CES 2013 – Sony backs 4K like it’s 3D
Sony has announced new TVs, content and distribution services for the Ultra HD standard it refers to as 4K, where screens have four times the number of pixels as the current Full HD standard.
At its press conference at the International CES consumer electronics show here in Las Vegas on Monday, it also showed a prototype TV where 4K was combined with another hot technology – OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diodes) – although the demonstration failed. Read more
Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s $500m record
In a week of big numbers for a previously slumping video game industry, Activision has come up with the biggest one of all – $500m in sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops II in its first 24 hours.
On Monday, Microsoft announced $220m in first-day sales for Halo 4 and then revealed, on the 10th anniversary of Xbox Live on Thursday, that a record 442m hours were played on it last week. Meanwhile, Sony announced sales of the PlayStation 3 had passed 70m and Nintendo expects the Wii U to sell out when it goes on sale in the US this weekend. Read more
The choices are blurring for consumers looking for a mobile device. While tablets are still popular, laptop screens and keyboards are being separated and recombined in new ways. Hybrid machines from Lenovo and Sony, using Microsoft’s Windows 8, give the indecisive a – somewhat unsatisfying – taste of both. Xperia and LG phones to shake and stir
AT&T has launched two smartphones licensed to kill the opposition with their specifications.
I felt rather like Q, 007’s gadget meister, in testing the Sony Xperia TL (a.k.a. the Bond phone), and the LG Optimus G quad-core, LTE smartphone, available since November 2 for $100 and $200 respectively with their two-year contracts. Read more
GoPro is hero of new action-cam contest
Behind every daredevil stunt or eye-popping event of late, a pint-sized point-of-view camera costing a few hundred dollars has been there to capture the moment through the eyes of the performer.
And, until a new thrust by Sony into a booming category, behind every “action cam” there has been a maverick entrepreneur pursuing a dream, which in the case of GoPro could lead to a $500m reported IPO next year. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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