Sony Eyeing Open Source Android for More of Their CE Devices Than Just TV

Good news for open source aficionados and developers in general, Sony is mulling over the use of Google's open source Android operating system in more in additional consumer electronics devices, said Yoshihisa Ishida, head of the company's TV division, in Tokyo recently, shortly after launching its first televisions using the software.

"We're thinking about using Android in more consumer electronics products," said Yoshihisa. He didn't specify what kind of products those might be.

Martyn Williams of IDG recently reported:

To date, Android has been mos widely used in smartphones, and Sony Ericsson already offers an Android-based device, the Xperia X10. Some companies have also shown Android-based tablet PCs, but Sony has not yet announced development of such a device. Sony and Google agreed in May to work together on pushing Android into consumer electronics. The recently launched TVs were an initial target of the collaboration.

 

Hikiro Tabuchi at the NYTs ínterestingly notes this is not the first time for Sony:

Sony was an early adopter of WebTV, the short-lived set-top box system introduced in 1996 by former Apple executives that connected TVs to the Internet. Sony also appeared miles ahead in 2000 with its AirBoard, a “personal IT TV” tablet that let users surf the Web, watch TV and videos, view photos and even wirelessly control other gadgets.

“We realized that we’d be left behind if we didn’t try something entirely different,” Yoshihisa Ishida, president of Sony’s home-entertainment business group, said at a roundtable meeting with reporters this week in Tokyo, where he spoke at length about the company’s TV strategy. “Then we met Google.”

“The Web is evolving at an incredible speed,” Mr. Ishida said. “We used to design TVs that predicted and carried features that we hoped would stay relevant a year or two years from now,” he said. “But the truth is, the future of the Web is impossible to predict.”

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