by Daisuke Wakabayashi, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
As Sony Corp. scrambles to reassert its technological relevance, Chief Executive Howard Stringer is betting on a strategy for the electronics giant that focuses on adding online content to more of its gadgets.
Speaking at the first joint public appearance by Sony’s new management team since a shake-up in February, Mr. Stringer said the Japanese giant is “moving faster than we’ve ever moved” to meet parallel challenges.
by Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
At its media event in early September, Apple threw down the gauntlet to Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. Dedicated gaming gadgets like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable “seemed so cool,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, but “they don’t stack up against the iPod touch.”
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A month ahead of its release, Susan Boyle’s album has more advance orders on Amazon.com than any CD in the retailer’s history, it said.
The Sony album, titled “I Dreamed a Dream,” goes on sale on Nov. 23. Ms. Boyle sang the song by the same name on “Britain’s Got Talent,” and the video of her unexpectedly strong performance made her a world-wide phenomenon after it landed on video-sharing sites like YouTube.
by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal
A new electronic book reader is expected Tuesday from book seller Barnes & Noble Inc. that will challenge readers from Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Corp. with a color touch-screen and $259 price, according to a planned ad for the device.
by Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Videogame publishers, pushing to expand their businesses, are making games that target girls and women a new industry battleground.
This holiday season, more games than ever are being geared toward female players. Electronic Arts Inc. is releasing the latest installment of its “Littlest Pet Shop” game for young girls and introducing a series of fashion-themed games called “Charm Girls Club” for older girls later this month.
by Andy Jordan, Editor and Producer, Tech Diary, The Wall Street Journal
Break out that mixtape. You know, the one with “Don’t Stop Believin’” and “Thriller.” It’s the Sony Walkman’s 30th birthday.
And it got a present. Kind of. The modern Sony Walkman digital music player beat out Apple’s iPod share of the portable music player market in Japan in the last week of August, according to a study by BCN, a Japanese electronics research firm.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Sometimes the good news is the bad news. Or vice versa.
Consider, for instance, today’s call on Microsoft by Caris & Co. analyst Curtis Shauger.
In a research note today, Shauger warned that weakening Xbox sales were likely to hurt top-line results for both the fiscal first quarter ending September and for the June 2010 fiscal year.
I have to admit that this story seems so bizarre that I’m not quite sure I believe it. A bunch of folks have been submitting the news that the Nigerian government is apparently so upset by a Sony Playstation commercial that it’s demanding an apology from Sony for allegedly “portraying Nigeria as a home of fraud where its citizens hardly do genuine business.”
by Staci D. Kramer, Co-Editor & EVP, PaidContent.org
It could change–and probably will when the first flurry is over–but, as I type, the Kindle edition of Dan Brown’s latest thriller The Lost Symbol is outselling the hardback on Amazon.
by Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Nintendo’s Wii has outsold rival game consoles. Now a new study says it also outlasts them.
The study by SquareTrade, an independent provider of warranties on electronics, estimates that 2.7 percent of Wiis fail during the first two years of ownership, compared with a 10 percent failure rate over that period for Sony’s PlayStation 3 and a 23.7 percent failure rate for Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
by Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Google is taking its campaign to promote its Chrome Web browser up a notch, sealing an alliance with Sony to have the Web browser pre-installed on some Sony notebook computers.
A Google spokesman said Monday that Chrome will be pre-installed on some Sony laptops.
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