This could be interesting...probably a failure...but interesting

One of my favorite brands is at it again. Sony has just announced that they will be shipping a Sony mylo device in September.

If you remember the Sony mylo was a sevice about 5 years ago that fell on its face because of the high service fees and the fact it only worked with the Clie at launch doomed it to failure. This is different though.

This Sony mylo (which stands for My Life On-Line) is a device. You have the touch screen monitor that slides open for a keyboard. Several applications such as e-mail, IM, music player (btw with a 1 gig flash memory built in), video player, photo editor and viewer and VoIP. VoIP you ask? Yep well one of the interesting things about the device is that there is no cellular service for it. It work purely on a WiFi network. I agree with Sony WiFi is becoming prevelant in the US for their target (18-24 year olds) especially around college campuses but I wonder if they aren't 5 years too early.

Three bummers about the device for me.

1) There is no UMD support. I was hoping that they would make the device capable of playing movies to add to its appeal.
2) There is no gaming focus. Yeah I know there PSP is out there but it is overkill for most games on the market for it. The reason the PSP gets knocked (although a decent device) is its size. This could have become a "PSP lite" version to compete more head to head with the Nintendo DS.
3) Lack of partnerships. I saw somewhere that eBay's Skype was planning on being in there somehow but it would have been nice to at least see an iTunes partnership. Apple needs to start making device deals and device dealers need to start making content deals if they want to compete in the long run.