Sony, Philips to Create New Wireless Standard

Amen!

Amen again.

This is exactly what we DON'T need. We already have short, medium, and long range standards. There is no purpose to this, other than it being controlled by Sony.

The same drive was behind the MemoryStick Duo.

Engineering: "Our MS is too big for future products, we need something the size of SD".

Marketing: "Agreed, we'll create something similar that will be our own."

berny, it's a wireless networking standard. Here's a quote from a Dow Jones article:

> Giving one example of the new technology application, the Sony
> spokesman said you will be able to transfer picture data stored in
> a digital camera to a PDA by just holding the devices close to each other.

http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/020905/0301000119_2.html

Sounds like Bluetooth to me, except that it's talking about NFC.

You could use Bluetooth as a short range payment system if you wrote the software for it, the same way Sony and Philips are going to have to do with NFC. Sony just doesn't want to use Bluetooth because it doesn't own it.

Stop Sony bashing. It's both Sony and Philips. Given that these are two giant electronic firms, I think this is going to take off.

Nobody wants to use Bluetooth anyway. Give me 802.11 any day.

So long Bluetooth.

To add, why did Apple have Bluetooth integrated with the new Macs? Why are there PC motherboards coming out which are bluetoothe ready? Why is Microsoft adding support for Bluetooth?

Oh look. the SONY cheerleader squad is here! Sit boom bah SONY.

Cheerleader my ars .....
this is in no way a competitor of bluetooth, they created it for a reason. And you guys just like to jump on Japanese companies because Ed said in the article "In fact, they seem to be positioning it as a rival to Bluetooth." good god, can you guys be even more brain dead ..

20 cm range ?? that's not enough for most stuff except those application sony/philips mentioned. if they are positioning it as a competition I think the acceptable range should be at lease 200cm.

ridiculous.
2004!?!??!?! Who tf is gonna wait that long for this bologna? Sony better make a BT handheld, or im outta here.
They're retarded. They dont know that consumers who buy their handhelds, are also buisnessmen.
This is pure bull****.
I want a handheld, 320X320 res, VG, BT built in, an SD-slot, and a built in Mp3 player, along with some good enhanced spakers.
TOO MUCH TO ASK DAMMIT SONY AND PALM?!?!?!

"I want a handheld, 320X320 res, VG, BT built in, an SD-slot, and a built in Mp3 player, along with some good enhanced spakers." (OS5 too)

This is exactly what I want as well!! If sony and Palm won't do it, why doesn't handera?

Sony LOVES proprietary technology. They try to make their proprietary stuff the standard so that they can ripoff other companies that get stuck having to use this standard. Anyone remember the BetaMAX?? And memorystick has been around for a while but still, only Sony is using it while everyone else uses CF or SD. Smartmedia is another one of those proprietary formats that will see the end of day pretty soon.

By the way, BT can be used for PRECISELY the same purpose as this "new" NFC from sony and phillips. You can use BT to buy a soda from a vending machine or pay for an airline ticket. All that capability is builtin but the software/security is the only major stumbling block.

Having served on several standards committees in the networking world I can tell you that companies constantly try to use standards as tools to lock up markets. Anything you can do to keep your customer base chained to your product is a good thing, though you have to disguise the chains as "open" standards.

The evidence in this case is that every PDA currently ships with a networking interface capable of doing the e-commerce kind of transactions cited, namely the IR port. It doesn't have the bandwidth of a wireless link, but you don't need a lot of bandwidth to handshake a commercial transaction. The only reason for inventing a new networking medium for this application is to lock in the consumer. Phillips sells or licenses the interfaces to the ATM manufacturers and only Sony products can use the feature.

And, here's a funny thought. Break the right codes and you could pick people's pockets just walking by them on the street. I do hope they pay some attention to encryption.

Hilarious! Philips and Sony, the king and queen of proprietary technology claim they are going to, "promote the NFC technology as an open standard!" What utter crap. It'll cost less to buy a Bluetooth chip in 2004 than it will cost to even license the right to use their junk.

Actually, considering that this is a Sony and Philips joint venture, Beta is a poor analogy. CDs would be a much better one. Those failed miserably, didn't they.

"You think that the CD was created by a global consortium?"

As a matter of fact, CDs are considered a standard because of a global consortium (ISO).

"Those technologies are widely pervasive now because some company decided to make a proprietary product."

Airbags are pervasive because of government mandates.

"So shut the hell up and let the grown ups talk."

Follow your own advice, junior.

I guess at least the Bluetooth consortium thinks it's doable, that and dozens of others with a google search on the subject. Not that that addresses relative ease.
http://www.bluetooth.com/news/news.asp?A=2&PID=145

"As a matter of fact, CDs are considered a standard because of a global consortium (ISO)."
- Let me be clear so that you'll understand: My question was "who created the CD?" Your comment about CDs being a standard by ISO is after the fact. It took a company (or in this case Philips and Sony) to create it. It was then widelyl adopted. Again, creation first, adoption second.

"Airbags are pervasive because of government mandates."
- Again, airbags were first created and widely implemented by Mercedes Benz, who then made it available to other car manufacturers. Soon, other companies realized (prior to government mandate) that it made good business sense to provide that as an option. Only after that did the government mandate it. So the point (again) is the the product was first created by a company, then widely adopted. Mercedes Benz's airbag first, then government mandate.

"Follow your own advice, junior."
- While your parents and friends may be glad that you finally got your G.E.D., it really doesn't cut it when you're playing with the big boys. Take those community classes that you've always been thinking about and maybe you'll attain that ever-elusive associates degree.

I am looking at this with a good dose of skeptisism. The range seems to put out of competition with bluetooth, as stated above, but what worries me is the negative effect that this is going to have on the pervasive standards.

I HOPE that this will be more of a complementary tech than a competing standard, and be a good way of paying for tickets etc. 30ft or so is, for payment transactions, a bit too much. Short range is strangely, a good thing because you can 'filter' which machines you want to make a payment to physically by where the handheld/phone/wristwatch/mp3player/whatever is, instead of bringing out the stylus to select from a dropdown box. I can see the real-world equivalent of spammers putting little boxes that are e-cash enabled next to vending machines, hoping people will select the wrong counterparty and make a $100 payment when you really just wanted to buy a coke.

BUT, I do think that adding data transfer capabilities is going to be a bad thing for the industry as a whole, if companies take a wait and see attitude for this new standard. Companies are out to make money, yes, but it dosen't always logically follow that making new standards is better for a company. I don't think that 3.5s and CDs are a good analogy becase they were standards that were technincally 'better' than the existing incumbents, not a standard that is catching on.

A better analogy might be DVDs and recordable/writable DVD standards. DVDs caught on because they were addressing a real need with a new standard that really was standard. The writables are a mess and nothing is really catching on because everyone and their dog is trying to make a new standard that is incompatible with the others. So what do you end up with? Everyone is sitting on the fence because there is too much uncertainty. Consumers don't want a dead-end player/recorder so they don't buy, companies can't invest in production because they don't know if their investment is going to be wasted.

"And to make money, they need to create products and technologies that are different (proprietary) from others."
Companies need to SELL products to make money. Proprietary systems have a higher profit margin, but taken to extremes, no-one buys, and everyone looses. If you don't have an economics background, the bar scene with the blonde in "A Beautiful Miind" shows this rather well. Companies making their own standards for lock-in is typical classical Adam Smith econ, going for all(the blonde) or nothing (going home alone). But a Nash equilibrium where everyone cooperates will let everyone win (going home with the somebody), even though you don't get the very best outcome (the blonde). The danger here, is that if everyone is agreeing to a single standard, one company who tries to go proprietary may suddenly lock in the market (one person goes for the blonde, all the other girls go home).

So, my hope is that NFC will define itself a niche that is not addressed by bluetooth, instead of trying to overlap and slowing down adoption rates (for both bluetooth and NFC). But in all honesty, from Sony's track record, I fear the worst.

Well, my problem is this. I severely doubt that Sony will make any device with BOTH NFC and Bluetooth in it, so that means it's one or the other, a seperation of standards, or TAKE UP THE MS PORT. They're so selfish. CDs prevailed because it wasn't ripping off anything, Sony and Philips are doing this a bit late in the game where Wi-Fi is already far past first generation products. Everything Sony makes is a rip-off that they hope can succeed, because they still got CD on the head. ...except for the Walkman, that was a good idea, but the rest of them aren't that impacting... I think...
Note: Nintendo made the PSX. Don't go into this crap with me, Sony cheated their way into the system. Long story.

I generally agree with your comments about Sony: Sony loves making proprietary stuff, to the detriment of their users. They sell the main box cheap and get you on the proprietary attachments.

In this case, however, I don't see how the short-range wireless is a substitute for Bluetooth. They can't replace Bluetooth with this. Even if they could, Bluetooth is too important a standard for them to ignore.