PSP is Sony's 'most potent weapon' in music battle

In a four-page Fortune article [paid sub. required] on "how far Sony has fallen," Adam Lashinsky says that the PSP is "emerging as its most potent weapon" in the digital music war against Apple and the popular iPod.

"Sony has faced one humiliation after another, from its failure to anticipate the demand for the technology that goes into flat-screen televisions to its flat-footed response to the rapid commoditization of conventional TVs and DVD players," writes Lashinsky. "Yet it's in digital music that it has suffered its greatest embarrassment. When it came to navigating the digital future, Sony should have been the leader, not a bumbling follower."

"Focusing strictly on the future, come to think of it, might be Sony's best option," Lashinsky continues. "The PSP, in all its multimedia glory, presents a tantalizing opportunity for Sony to simply move beyond its digital-music travails and leapfrog the competition with a totally different gadget that stands a chance of becoming the ultimate arbiter of cool. Now that would be a feat that would put Sony's stamp on the current century as much as the last one."