Sony has detailed plans to expand its sensors business and make it more relevant to edge computing and the internet of things, while also outlining growth plans in gaming, anime, and electric cars.
In an outline [PDF] of a new strategy outlined yesterday in Tokyo, Sony said in the past eight years it has concentrated resources particularly towards CMOS image sensors to secure a dominant position in the imaging applications and sensing market.
Positioning its investment as a contribution to the “evolution of IoT technology,” Sony said:
Sony appears to have identified the problem many IoT vendors have struck, namely that data collected at the edge of a network often needs to travel to the core – a cloud or private data centre – for analysis. That journey is expensive and slow, and complicates the process of using data collected on the edge for near realtime analysis and performance tuning. Plenty of IoT vendors therefore assume a gateway device will do some on-prem processing, if only to sift the data that really needs to get to a more substantial server.
If Sony can pack enough compute power and AI smarts into CMOS sensors that they change that strategy, the company could give the edge compute market quite a shake.
Sony sensors will also ride along in its all-electric prototype sedan, VISION-S. Currently the automobile has 40 sensors in its design to facilitate 360-degree awareness. Last month, Sony and Vodafone Germany started 5G driving tests of the prototype to test low-latency data transmission delays from the vehicle to the cloud and back, a process it wants to minimize if the thing is going to move at any useful speed.
Yesterday the company said:
Sony’s gaming and anime business has also become an important part of their portfolio. It’s “Demon Slayer” anime movie was a hit in both Japan and the US and the company plans to develop a came based on it, complete with movies and and TV shows spun off the game. The company also has a strong subscription program for games, anime and music, and are working on a new VR headset for the PlayStation 5.
Sony said:
The company will fund the three “strategic efforts” outlined above with an $18bn (two trillion yen) war chest it says is made possible by strong cashflow. ®
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