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Sony Reinforces Presence In Desktop PC Market
(05/12/98; 2:08 p.m. ET)
By Doug Olenick, Computer Retail Week
Sony re-asserted its commitment to the desktop PC market Tuesday by unveiling a $999 Vaio mini-tower PC. It also announced a new sub-notebook and a DVD-ROM Discman.
Dr. Teruaki Aoki, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, said Sony has overcome the product shortages and slow times to market it suffered during its first two years in the PC business. Aoki disputed industry rumors that Sony was withdrawing from the desktop PC market to concentrate on notebooks.
"These were growing pains that had to be dealt with. We are in the PC business for the long haul, and are committed to the branded PC business," he said.
Wataru Ogawa, president of Sony Information Technology of America, promised Sony will decrease inventory levels in all product areas, going to what he called a "grocery-store" approach. "We want to keep products fresh, and we promise to speed time to market and lower inventory levels," he said.
Sony's product line, which it will roll out at PC Expo in New York next month, features three new Vaio models. The PCV-E201 and PCV-E203 use Intel 266-megahertz and 300-MHz Celeron processors, respectively, and the PCV-E205 is based on a 333-MHz Pentium II chip.
The E201 is the first Sony PC to start with an expected street price below $1,000, Ogawa said. The E201 features 32 megabytes of synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), 4.3GB hard drive, AGP 3D graphics acceleration, K56flex modem and 32-bit audio. It is scheduled to use Windows 98.
The E203 is Sony's first PC to incorporate a DVD-ROM drive, and will ship with two DVD-ROM software titles. Other features include 48 MB of SDRAM and a 6.4GB hard drive. The PCV-E205 also features a DVD-ROM drive, 64 MB of SDRAM, an 8 gigabyte hard drive and 512 kilobytes of pipeline burst SRAM. All three are expected to ship in late June with respective street prices of $999, $1,399, and $1,699.
Meanwhile, Sony plans to release its first entries into the subnotebook market: the 505G, the new 800 Series, and two additions to the 700 Series. All the models will use the upcoming Windows 98 operating system.
The 505, called "super slim" by Sony, weighs 3 pounds, measures about 1 inch thick, and is about 10 percent smaller than a standard notebook computer. It uses a 200-MHz Pentium processor with MMX, and has a 2.1-GB hard drive, 32 MB of SDRAM, a K56-flex modem, and a 10.4-inch TFT display. The 505 comes with an external floppy diskette drive and port replicator. A CD-ROM drive is optional for $299. The 505 will ship in July with a $1,999 expected street price.
The 808 is Sony's first Pentium II-equipped notebook. The 266-MHz unit comes with 64 MB of SDRAM, 13.3-inch display, 24x CD-ROM drive, and a 4-GB hard drive. The 808 also ships in July carrying a $3,699 expected street price.
The additions to the 700 Series are shipping in June. The 731 uses a 200-MHz Pentium with MMX, and features 32 MB of SDRAM, 2.1-GB hard drive, 12.1-inch display, 24x CD-ROM, and K56flex modem. The 735 uses the faster 233-MHz Pentium chip with MMX, and comes standard with 64 MB of SDRAM. Both are scheduled to ship in June, with respective street prices of $1,799 and $2,199.
Sony also showed off a Discman portable DVD-ROM drive. The unnamed device can be used as either a portable computer drive or as a TV set-top box for playing DVD movies. The device, about 50 percent larger than a CD Discman, does not have a tentative release date or price. The Sony DVD-ROM upgrade kit should be out this summer with an expected street price of $349, and retailers can expect the Discman to be priced higher. |
