Sony wants to make an iPad clone, according to the company's CFO Nobuyuki Oneda. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Oneda said of the iPad "That is a market we are also very interested in. We are confident we have the skills to create a product."
It's certainly no surprise that Apple's long-expected announcement last week would spur a slew of copycat designs -- one of the trends at this year's CES, which came *before* the iPad event, there were plenty of iSlate announcements, notably from Dell and also Microsoft's Steve Ballmer (nice guess on the name by the way, guys).
Sony is one of the companies that could pull it off, too, with expertise in making well-built, tiny and great-looking hardware, although it will be playing catchup, as Oneda adds "Time-wise we are a little behind the iPad but it's a space we would like to be an active player in."
The problem is the OS in general, and the app store in particular. Sony's plan is to distribute content from an online store that will work with this tablet device as well as its PCs, TVs and Walkmans. But we suspect that the thing that has kept the tablet in Apple's secret laboratories for so long isn't the hardware (it is, after all, little more than a screen), or even the availability of content, but the software. Specifically, an OS designed to be free of the complexity of the modern Mac or PC, to do just one thing at a time and to be very easy to use.
If this sounds like something that might take more than a few months to make, it is. That's why we expect the upcoming tidal wave of tablets to be little more than multi-touch PCs with a jazzed up interface. In short, they'll be a lot like a giant Nexus phone.
Sony interested in challenging Apple’s iPad [Computerworld/IDG]
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
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