In the future home envisioned by Sony Corp, the TV that features online stock trading and the game console that downloads movies will be just a few of the gadgets enabled for fast Internet access.
Those devices will, of course, proudly wear the Sony brand.
While Sony now offers only a few such products, this inter-networked dream is no fantasy for the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant. It is central to the multinational's new business strategy.
True, Sony currently lacks two key ingredients vital to a dominant role in the networked future: software platforms and telecommunications properties that fuse the end user with the information cloud at large.
But many analysts believe that what ultimately determines the winner in the broadband era lies not in networking or operating systems but in entertainment content.
"The big question is what moves the entertainment companies will make," said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst with Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo. "For Sony, the idea of linking up content with hardware is a step in the right direction."
Under a strategy announced last March, Sony predicts that what it calls the "ubiquitous value network" will arrive by 2005.
The idea: gadgets will "seamlessly" communicate with each other, beaming back and forth music, movies, e-mail, stock market information and video and telephone conversations.
Leading off the new product parade is Sony's palm-sized camcorder, introduced in Japan last autumn and in the US last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The Network Handycam IP camcorder, which sells for about US$1,200, can send short video clips via e-mail, so you need not wait until the vacation is over to ship some choice images to relatives. And it comes with a Web browser.
In its quest for dominance in networked content -- that bland-sounding noun that is everything in online merchandising, Sony has several advantages over many rivals: a powerful brand name and treasure-trove of films, shows and musical acts.
And in Japan and to a less extent across the Pacific, Sony enjoys a public receptive to fancy experimental gadgets.
Already, the company is working to make the distribution and creation of content -- by consumers -- a part of its business.
Screenblast.com helps people create music and videos and show them online. Another Sony Web site, Image Station, stores and distributes digital photographs. In Japan, a Sony-run site called PercasTV broadcasts live shows on the Net.
Some of the services are free, others require a fee. And the sites are all designed for optimum performance with Sony digital camcorders, cameras, audio recorders and AV-oriented computers.
That will help Sony pack its machinery with original content and services, once the business gets off the ground, said Masayuki Yonezawa, an analyst with BNP Paribas in Tokyo.
In Japan, Sony is already an Internet provider with nearly 2 million subscribers, or about 4 percent of the market.
Unlike the US, which is dominated by America Online and to a lesser extent Microsoft, Japan's provider market has many smaller players.
This spring, Sony plans to start offering broadband service through the PlayStation2 game console. Subscribers will be able to download games, participate in online auctions and get news and entertainment.
For competition, Yahoo Japan and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, Japan's biggest telecom company, are also planning to offer high-speed Internet access for PlayStation 2 owners.
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