Sony may be planning to build its own music store and devices like Apple and, more recently, Microsoft have done with iTunes (and the iPod) and the Zune Marketplace (and the Zune player) respectively. This revelation was made by Sony Electronics’ Stan Glasgow who also admitted that the Sony Connect music store has not been successful. Glasgow also made some cryptic statements that “DRMs are going to become less important”. Given Sony’s track record on DRM (Remember the CD rootkits?), I’ll doubt very much that Sony would consider making its store free of any DRM.
The new player and store could be ready by December 2007.
Source: Engadget