At CES 2020, Sony spelled out the company’s future
Looking beyond consumer products: part one
Typically, at mega conventions like CES, we expect to be inundated with products that range from practical to plain-ol’ wacky with no real purpose, other than ‘because they could.’ After all, that’s what Samsung, LG, TCL, and countless other big tech players do, so why not Sony? Till now, that too had been their approach to CES, where Sony would unveil numerous wearables, sensors for your tennis racquet, speakers, Walkman, phones, an arsenal of TVs, sound systems, and a whole lot more, with more products to be announced later in the year. But at CES 2020, Sony did something welcomed and unexpected — they focused. Instead of the usual parade of products that may or may not arrive over the next year, Sony shined a light on a handful of their innovations. The result? Their best CES since I’ve attended, and I’ve been to over a dozen of them.
Sony announced very few products at CES 2020
And it was their best showcase, ever
sonyreconsidered.com
Here’s an overview of what Sony showcased at CES 2020:
- 360 Reality Audio experience booth
- Sony Pictures virtual production demo set, remembling what ILM is doing with The Mandolorian
- Eye-sensing Light Field Display, which allows you to see 3D content without glasses. Think hologram.
- Vision-S concept car
- 5G receiver connected to a camera for live, wireless broadcasting
- Real-time motion capture (camera + AI), negating the need for traditional motion trackers
- Crystal LED display, allowing the screen to scale to virtually any size
- Master Series TVs (showcasing their collaboration with Netflix)
- Acoustic Multi-Audio, the latest speaker technology inside of Bravia TVs
- 8K and 4K OLED TVs
From that list, only one of those is directly targeted at consumers — their televisions, the Sony Z8H 8K TV, and the Z8H 4K OLED — the only new products unveiled that are coming to market later this year. Everything else Sony had to show or wanted to talk about is what I would call ‘technology’ in its purest form, or maybe ‘underlying technology.’ 360 Reality Audio? Sure, you’ll find it inside of Sony headphones, but the point here is for them to partner with studios and hardware makers to drive the adoption of the standard.
The hologram-like Light Field Display wasn’t about a commercial product, but instead a showcase of their advancement in screen technology. Now, who wants to partner with Sony and incorporate it into their business, say retail, airports, or amusement parks? 5G? Not with a new phone. Instead, here is how sports leagues can equip Sony 5G receivers to their broadcast cameras (which Sony also happens to make), to allow camera operators more flexibility by eliminating the need to be tethered.
As for their Crystal LED display and real-time motion capture technology, the target was once again broadcasters, studios, and other related industries.
And of course, there’s the show-stealer, the Sony Vision-S concept car that was all about boasting the company’s prowess in image sensors, 360 Reality Audio, and entertainment background to carmakers. Despite some narratives out there, Sony has no plans to make a car, nor do they have the capital or resources for it. What they do have is their expertise in the three mentioned fields that could become a core part of the autonomous future.
At CES 2020, Sony wanted it to be known how far their image sensor division, which has already wreaked havoc on Canon and Nikon, has come and how their sensors can help propel the future of mobility. And once this driverless future has been reached, it’s their audio technology and entertainment expertise that will delight passengers who’ll have very little to do during their commute.
Some might chalk their lack of tangible products up to being purely incidental. After all, no tech company can bring exciting and/or innovating products to market year-after-year. And, all tech companies have ups and downs in their product cycles as they wait for new technologies to emerge or for R&D to finalize, so they can unveil their long-in-development product. But in the case of Sony, I don’t believe the lack of products was due to a mismatch with product timelines (though they’ll be announcing plenty more throughout the year), and instead, an indication of their future.
I’ll leave the hows and the whys for another article, but we can all agree that at some point, likely the start of the new century, Sony began to fall behind and quickly became unable to compete in the consumer market. Where Sony was once the king of, well, all of tech, we now have Apple, GoPro, Samsung, Sonos, and countless others as the consumer tech company darlings. This CES was the external realization of that — Sony, unable to compete on a product-by-product basis, is not whimpering away and slowly fading off into the sunset, but regrouping and refocusing on their strengths — core technologies.
That includes their image sensors, which are found inside of Alpha cameras but, more importantly, inside of iPhone and other rival smartphone makers. But it’s not just traditional products with traditional cameras, but autonomous cars, scooters, drones, factories and robots which are starting to arrive in a meaningful way. And for Sony, where iPhone 11 Pro already has what seems like a lot, three sensors, on its back, other devices will require way more. The Vision-S car Sony showed off? That has 32 image sensors to help it achieve Level-4 autonomy. Oh, and the DJI Mavic Zoom 2 drone I have sitting next to me? It’s able to avoid most obstacles out there, thanks to 6 image sensors that give it a 360-degree view of the world.
And just because Sony won’t make a car, doesn’t mean they won’t sell/license their technologies like 360 Reality Audio to everyone else to improve their products. This way, Sony can do what they do best — create powerful audio experiences — and car companies, like GM or BMW, can focus on building their electric, autonomous car to the best of their abilities — knowing that other aspects of it like entertainment and audio is taken care of.
This same story is playing out in the professional product world as well. Once upon a time, consumers purchased cameras and camcorders in droves, but that time has long since passed. Leaning into their image sensors, as well as their production expertise, Sony is crafting solutions, like their Crystal LED display which can be arranged in just about any size and resolution, to provide new ways for studios to film and edit their TV shows and movies.
With the start of this decade, we’re witnessing a new Sony. One that’s less focused on competing head-on with Apple and Samsung, and instead, a company that has looked inside, realized what makes it unique, and is leveraging those core assets to create powerful technologies. In the 80s and 90s, Sony shaped how we experienced music through Walkman and how we watched movies, TV shows, sports, and played games through their Trinitron, and eventually LCD sets. And they’re poised to do it again.
The only difference is that while it was you and I who relied upon them to deliver cutting edge technologies and entertainment, it’s now the entire industry, from smartphone makers to car manufacturers, film studios, and medical labs that will rely on Sony. In this future that we’re fast approaching, we might see the SONY logo less often, but we’ll be impacted by it more often, and that sounds like a bright future for them and us.
After all, isn’t that the promise of technology — to move humanity forward?
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