Sony mulling production of mylo 2 handheld?

by Darren Murph posted Jun 15th 2007 at 8:34AM

While you may have given Sony's hard-to-categorize mylo little chance at surviving in the market, a recent report seems to show that sales were "exactly as Sony expected," which possibly means that there's more where that came from. Although surveyed retailers expressed mixed results in regard to sales, Sony "considers the mylo the forerunner to a new category of devices that cater to kids who want to replicate their PC online experience in a portable," and reportedly mentioned that the "next-generation model would include new partners and expanded capability." Now, we're not sure if WWAN or WiMAX connectivity could be headed to the not-yet-confirmed mylo 2, but it's pretty safe to assume that competition in the converged device market will have heated up quite intensely for the second iteration.

[Thanks, Ryan]

Filed under: Handhelds

Tags: mylo, mylo 2, Mylo2, pda, rumor, sony, sony mylo, sony mylo 2, SonyMylo, SonyMylo2

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Matt @ Jun 15th 2007 9:06AM

Personally I think the Mylo was a rather well designed device that had (has) a lot of potential. The only problem with it is the price point as compared to the target audience. $300 is much to high for the 16-25 year old crowd to afford. To get by with a price point that high it needs a much more mature and sophisticated desgin. The alternative of course is to bring down the price.

If they are re-developing th edevice i think positioning it more as a communication tool with more IM clients, while stripping away the meager PMP features might make it more enticing.

Knowing that I have wifi in my house and at my work, would make picking this up enticing if the price dropped and the device focused on communication. Lets see Skype, Googletalk, MSN, AIM, etc. and perhaps POP3 email access.

Neutral

ScOObyDoo @ Jun 15th 2007 9:11AM

Making this thing wifi-only was a big mistake.

Typical of Sony to make something without Bluetooth, considering their collaboration with Ericsson.

This could have been a perfect add-on device for their phones, but in true Sony style their left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

It could have had A2DP with a headphone jack controlling their walkman phone line, contact exchange and messaging using their phones. But instead they made this turd nobody uses.

Neutral

BeyondtheTech @ Jun 15th 2007 9:49AM

Why it didn't make the impact it should have:

1. No PDA functions - can't store contacts, calendar information?! Even a cheap phone can do that.

2. Third-party software can't encode videos for mylo. Most PSP software should have been able to do it, but the mylo's codec requirement is skewed at best. Even Slysoft, maker of CloneDVDmobile, gave up on trying to encode video that would be compatible with the mylo. Only Image Converter 2 software, which wasn't even available for US buyers when the mylo was initially released.

3. Not software expandable, no third-party development, no additional applications or games for it.

4. No AOL Instant Messenger.

Neutral

Brian @ Jun 15th 2007 10:06AM

Things Sony should change:

1. Add Bluetooth, as others have pointed out.
2. Add an SD or micro SD card slot. MemoryStick is a dying format.
3. Lower the price. $350 is a tough price for this device. If they can get it to $200 or less, then they'll have a winner.
4. Release an SDK so that people can write applications for the device. I'd love to be able to SSH into remote servers from this thing.
5. Add AIM. What were they thinking?

Neutral