Sony tosses in the towel on Connect music store

IDG News Service - Sony Corp.'s three-year effort to beat Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store is over.

The company, one of the largest movie, music and consumer electronics companies in the world, said yesterday that it will be closing down its Connect music store in Europe and the U.S.

In its place, Sony is adding Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media technology to its music players and allowing consumers to download copy-protected content from numerous Windows Media-compatible music stores on the Internet, including those from Napster, Audible.com and Wal-Mart.

Sony will also distribute Windows Media Player 11 software with its devices.

The news, which was announced at the IFA trade show in Berlin and via a statement in the U.S., represents a big change in the direction of Sony's portable audio business.

Sony created the portable audio sector in 1979 when it debuted the TPS-L2 Walkman, a cassette-tape-based audio player that cost the equivalent of a week's wages for an office worker. The company led the market for years, but that all changed when Apple introduced its iPod in 2001.

Sony had actually beaten Apple to market with a digital music player, but the product wasn't popular. It took Apple's combination of a player, software and music store to score a hit with consumers and kick-start the digital portable audio market. Ever since then, Sony has been trying to regain its lead in the market.

Its first players weren't compatible with the fast-growing MP3 format and would only play Sony's proprietary ATRAC format -- something that didn't find favor with consumers. MP3 was eventually added in late 2004, but the players remained locked to Sony's online music store for music purchases until this week's adoption of Windows Media.

Sony has also had trouble keeping up with Apple in hardware. A video version of the iPod was launched in late 2005, but the same features weren't added to a Walkman player until April, when devices went on sale in Europe. Walkman players with video still aren't available in the U.S. but will go on sale in September, Sony said.

The two players to be launched in the U.S. include one that hasn't been seen before.

The new NWZ-S610 is a smaller and lower-end version of the NWZ-A810 Walkman that hit Europe in April. Both have a QVGA resolution screen (240 by 320 pixels), but the S610 is a little smaller at 1.8-in., versus a 2-in. screen on the A810.

MPEG4 and H.264 video is supported, as are the Windows Media, AAC and MP3 audio formats and JPEG images. Both players will come in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacity models, and prices will range from $120 to $210 for the S610 series and $140 to $230 for the A810 series.