Sony Abandons Failed MicroMV Format, Cuts Jobs

by News Editor
Published on Oct 19, 2003 12:00 AM



According to a report coming out of Japan, Sony is planning on cutting up to 10% of it's workforce, or about 15,000 to 20,000 jobs worldwide by March 6th. The report also says that Sony will be abandoning unprofitable projects including the MicroMV camcorder format. The report from the Japanese Nihon Keizai Shimbun says that Sony is cutting the format because it has not been popular outside of Europe.

John Dolak with Sony Corporate Communications said that the report did not come from Sony, and was not willing to comment beyond saying that ''We're having a corporate strategy meeting on October 28th in Tokyo.'' In April, Sony shocked the financial market by announcing a earnings shortfall, and these cutbacks are an attempt to improve the companies financial situation.

MicroMV is a proprietary format which Sony introduced in 2002. The format, whose tapes are much smaller than MiniDV tapes, was designed to be used in extra smaller camcorders - however the size reduction also meant a reduction in video quality because the camcorders used MPEG2 compression instead of standard DV compression. It is no surprise that Sony is abandoning the format which has been criticized for producing poor quality video. One industry analyst, who spoke on the condition on anonymity, said that ''MicroMV sells a fraction of what MiniDV does in the US. I am not surprised that Sony is abandoning the format.''

The news is somewhat of a surprise, in October Sony introduced a new MicroMV model, the DCR-IP1 which was the smallest model yet, about the size of a pack of playing cards, however the expected price of $1,200 has been criticized for being to high. The industry analyst who we talked to said that he thought that the IP1 might sell much better than it's MicroMV predecessors ''I do think the IP1, which will hit the market soon, will do much better than earlier models because it is much smaller than previous ones.''

A final announcement about the job cuts and hopefully the future of MicroMV is expected after the October 28th meeting.