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Ask HN: Is Apple becoming the next Sony?

3 points by hobbs ↗ HN
In today's edition of "I, Cringely", (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/) Robert Cringely suggests that Apple is deliberately withholding Blu-ray support on their hardware in order give itself a leg-up in its own iTunes-based HD video distribution.

This type of behavior got me thinking of another company that blurs the borders between the content and hardware industries: Sony. Sony started buying movie studios after it lost the VHS vs. Betamax war, believing that it could win next time if it only controlled the content. The problem with Sony now is that the tail often wags the dog. The hardware division often makes questionable decisions (PS3 Blu-ray) in order to satisfy the content division.

Did Apple bite the forbidden fruit and become "tainted" when it launched the iTunes music store? Will Apple eventually buy Pixar and/or Disney outright in order to have full control of the content? Can we expect to see stupid decisions (a la Sony rootkit) result from the left hand, which affects the reputation of the right?

2 comments

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ideas101
whenever company grows the chances of becoming arrogant also grows and this is what is happening with all big companies which includes apple and sony ... apple made a big mistake in trying to control the iphone market by locking the phone and having only one service provider --- on the top of that they pushed another program to make unlocked iphone useless - this has created a very bad taste in consumer's mind. This is the world of free market - the sooner u understand the better... apple could have instead sold the unlock iphone to begin with ... and with the help of unique marketing and distribution channel it could have profited big time - this would have also stopped the smuggling of millions of iphones to other countries.
boucher
"apple made a big mistake in trying to control the iphone market by locking the phone and having only one service provider"

Apple doesn't think so, and the market doesn't seem to either. iPhone is selling great.