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Sony is Ready to Be Competitor of Apple

Sony is reported to be readying a launch announcement for a new music and video service set to take on the might of Apple's iTunes, which indicate that Sony is ready to be competitor of Apple.

Today Sony announced the release of their cloud based music library called, Music Unlimited.  This cloud based digital music streaming service gives you access to millions of tracks and Sony plans to have the service live by the end of the year.  The hope is that Music Unlimited will turn many of Sony's electronic products into online libraries for streaming music.

Announcing this new service at the IFA electronics show might have been in bad timing for Sony.  Apple also announced the releases of new iPod and iTunes product lines.  These products  by Apple have been a thorn in Sony’s side for sometime now.  Sony's Music Unlimited service is completely different from Connect and just not the same as the approach that Apple has taken over the last few years.

"We are excited to offer our customers high-quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sony's network-enabled devices," Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony's Networked Products & Services Group, in the statement.

Sony rose 0.9 percent to 2,396 yen as of 1:52 p.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average gained 0.5 percent. Apple climbed 3 percent to close at $250.33 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday.

The Financial Times claims that the new service from Sony will use the PlayStation 3 and PSP consoles as a launch point.

Other Sony devices including Vaio PCs, Bravia TVs, Walkman media players and Sony Ericsson mobile phones are also in the roadmap for the service, according to the FT's sources.

But we already knew this as we reported way back in November 2009 that Sony was plotting something like this.

Sony's $260m acquisition of music-identifying service Gracenote back in 2008 is said to play a significant role in the new service.

The service is expected to be launched at some point in 2011.

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