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Sony’s Tablet S is entering the markets in the US, UK and Japan.The tablets runs on Google’s operating system Android and has a new wedge shaped design.

Following the success of Apple’s iPad, other manufacturers such as Samsung and HTC have released their own tablets.

Analysts say while Tablet S may prove to be a popular Android tablet, it is not a serious threat to the iPad.

As it goes head-to-head with the iPad and others, analysts said the Sony Tablet S did have some unique features not available in other devices.

For one, the hardware design, a wedge shape, is different from most other flat, thin tablets.

“The unique form factor shifts the device’s weight closer to your palm, making it feel lighter and more comfortable while reading a book or magazine,” Sony said in a press release.

Other features include the ability to play PlayStation games on the device and stream music and video to your TV or home entertainment system from the tablet.

Even though Sony has come up with some distinctive features, analysts say Apple’s first mover advantage and its brand appeal has placed it squarely ahead of all others in the tablet market.

But it might still prove a threat to other tablets. Even though Sony entered the market later than many other competitors, the timing could work out in its favour.

The Tablet S is in stores in the UK on 15 September, the US on 16 September and in Japan on 17 September.

Electronics maker Sony reported a loss in the April-to-June period after the earthquake and tsunami hit production at its Japanese factories.
The company reported a net loss £122 million for the quarter. That was down from a £210 million net profit during the same period last year.

Sony also cut its forecast for its full-year earnings by 25% to 60bn yen, from an original projection of a profit of 80bn yen.

The company said sales and profit “were mainly affected by the negative impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake as well as the deterioration of the electronics business environment, and unfavourable exchange rates”.

Sony was not the only electronics company to see its results for the quarter hit by the natural disasters. Also on Thursday, Panasonic reported a net loss of 30.4bn yen, compared with a 43.7bn-yen profit for the same period a year earlier. Sharp also recorded a quarterly loss of 49.3bn yen, down from a profit of 10.7bn yen last year.

The company said various factors had contributed to the drop, not least the falling prices of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) TVs.

Sony also warned that as economic woes in its key markets continued, it expected TV sales to fall even further.

Sony also said that the cyber attacks that some of its networks were subjected to earlier this year – which led to network services being temporarily shut down – had led to higher costs to cover items such as better security measures.

These costs will be recorded in the July-to-September quarter, the company said.

Sony discovered in April that hackers had gained access to its PlayStation Network, which was then shut down worldwide for more than a month while the company reviewed its security procedures.

Its network services for Qriocity and Sony Online Entertainment were also attacked.

A hacker group has attacked the Sony data network and stolen more than one million passwords, email addresses and other information.Lulz Security said it had broken into servers that run SonyPictures.com. The Japanese electronics company said it was aware of Lulz Security’s statement and was investigating the claims.

Sony had to apologise in April after its PlayStation Network was attacked and hackers stole data from more than 77 million accounts.

That attack was considered the biggest in internet history and led to Sony shutting down the PlayStation Network and other services for almost a month.

The company has estimated that that data breach will result in a £104 million hit to its operating profit.

Since then, Sony’s networks have become targets for hackers and the company has confirmed at least four other break-ins prior to the claimed attack on Sony Pictures.

Lulz Security claims to be behind one of those attacks, an assault on Sony Music Japan.

The latest alleged attack will come as a blow to the Japanese firm, 24 hours after it announced the PlayStation Network would be fully restored in the US and Europe, and said it had beefed up its security systems.

In a statement on Thursday, Lulz Security said it had hacked into a database that included unencrypted passwords as well as names, addresses and dates of birth of Sony customers.

“From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING,” it said. “Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?

“What’s worse is that every bit of data we took wasn’t encrypted. Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plain text, which means it’s just a matter of taking it.

“This is disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it.”

The group also recently claimed responsibility for hacking the website of the PBS network and posting a fake story in protest at a news programme about WikiLeaks.

Electronics giant Sony has reported more online security breaches on a number of its websites.The company has said that personal data of 2,000 consumers was stolen from a Sony Ericsson website in Canada, while details of 8,500 users were leaked on Sony Music Entertainment website in Greece.

The company said emails, passwords and phone numbers of users were stolen although Sony said that no credit card details had been lost.

The company said in a statement that both the websites were externally hosted by third parties and were not connected to its main network.

Last month, account information of more than 100 million customers was compromised in cyber attacks on Sony’s networks.

The company’s spokesman said that the company’s Music Entertainment website in Indonesia and Sony’s Thailand website were also hacked, though no data was stolen.

As a result Sony said all four websites had been temporarily shut down.

Sony has announced a full year loss of ¥269bn- £2.05 billion.The losses add pressure on its embattled chief executive Sir Howard Stringer in a year when the group has suffered from the devastating earthquake in Japan and a cyber attack on its network.

Its share price has fallen by a quarter since the start of the year.

The company has been dragged into a full year loss by a charge of ¥360bn related to rules around deferred tax assets in its home country.

While the charge is not in cash it will force a “substantial decrease from the February forecast”, the chief financial officer Masaru Kato said yesterday. The loss a year earlier was ¥40.8bn.

The reversal will see Sony post its third consecutive year of losses, although Mr Kato added: “The establishment of this valuation allowance does not reflect a change in Sony’s view of its long-term corporate strategy.”

The company said sales would remain in line with its previous expectations, despite the slump to a full-year loss. It reported yesterday that sales were likely to be down from ¥7.2tn 12 months ago to ¥7.1tn.

This comes despite the impact of the earthquake in Japan just weeks before the end of the company’s financial year, which Mr Kato said had “significantly damaged” Sony’s supply chain. It had also been forced to close nine manufacturing plants.

The earthquake’s impact drove sales down ¥22bn. The disaster means the company will also be hit with a charge of ¥12bn over the costs of closing manufacturing sites as well as for life insurance policy reserves in its financial services business.

It also expects expenses of ¥11bn related to repair, removal and cleaning costs to its buildings and machinery as well as inventories. However, Sony added almost all of the losses will be offset by insurance payments.

The real damage from the earthquake will come in the current financial year, with Sony predicting supply chain disruptions will see sales fall £3.35 billion (¥440bn) and profits down £1.14 billion (¥150bn). “Until the quake hit, we had been counting on a considerable recovery in earnings,” the chief financial officer said.

Still, Sony officials predicted that the company would return to profit for the full year to the end of March 2012 with sales expected to grow year on year.

Sony was also hit by a cyber attack on its online PlayStation Network leaving millions of users details exposed. The company revealed yesterday that the hack is likely to cost £110 million (¥14bn).

This is made up of the theft protection programme for its customers as well as the cost of the incentives to bring disgruntled customers back into the fold. It will also face payouts to upgrade its network security, customer support costs as well as legal and expert costs.

Yet the company warned that costs relating to the hack could potentially spiral. During yesterday’s press conference, Mr Kato revealed that should there be confirmed reports of identity theft or misuse of credit cards following the cyber-attack – which are so far yet to materialise – it could face rising costs. It also faces a series of class action lawsuits.

Sony have warned that another 25 million users have had their personal details stolen.
As well as the Playstation Network, which has been down since 20 April, the company has now taken its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) service offline.

It said credit card details and other personal information have been taken from an “outdated database”.

Last week, Sony admitted that the personal details of 77m Playstation users have been stolen by hackers.

Since the breach was revealed, shares in Sony have dropped by over 5% amid calls for the company’s CEO Howard Stringer to stand down over the crisis.

In a message to its customers, Sony said: “We had previously believed that SOE customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company. However, on 1 May we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen”.

Sony was quoted by the Associated Press (AP) news agency as saying that the latest incident occurred on 16 and 17 April. This was earlier than the larger Playstation user security breach, which occurred on 20 April.

Sony only admitted the scale of the problem to users on 27 April.

This new attack goes beyond users of Playstation hardware, affecting PC and Facebook gamers – potentially an additional 25 million people.

Sony said that names, home addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and gender information was taken.

Additionally, direct debit details of around 10,700 customers in Austria, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany were stolen, as were the credit or debit card details of some 12,700 non-US customers.

Sony explained that the information included card numbers and expiry dates, but said that it was taken from a 2007 database which was securely encrypted.

The company added: “There is no evidence that our main credit card database was compromised. It is in a completely separate and secured environment.”

The suspension of SOE, which is based in San Diego, California, left multiplayer games including DC Universe and Facebook-based Fortune League unavailable.

The company had previously said that it would get the Playstation Network up-and-running again this week.

It has also promised assistance for users who have been affected by the hack.

Sony has announced that it has ceased production of its celebrated portable cassette playing audio device- the Walkman.
The Walkman will be fondly remembered as the device which transformed listening to music from an activity conducted principally in one’s own home,  to a means of listening everywhere.

Friends of Sony Walkman may have predicted its demise when digital technology offered a more compact alternative.

But following its birth in 1979, an astonishing 220 million units were sold – testament to the device’s status as a 1980s icon no less memorable than shoulder pads and Filofaxes.

Tailor-made for that decade’s widespread aspiration for conspicuous, miniaturised consumerism, the Walkman meant no user needed to get home to listen to LPs.

Joggers could motivate themselves with the assistance of the Rocky theme.

Alas, technological progress and the dawn of the CD meant the decade was barely complete before the general public started to recognise that audio cassettes were not, in fact, the medium of the future but a cumbersome, chewing-up-prone source of much annoyance.

CD and MP3 versions of the Walkman will remain in production, but it is via the ubiquity of the music played on Apple iPods leaking beyond their users’ headphones into the earshot of other public transport users that its spirit truly lives on.

Sony, hoping to increase sales ahead of the holiday shopping season, has slimmed down its electronic readers and also given them touchscreens.
The three new versions of its “Reader” line also feature an improved screen with better clarity, the manufacturer said on Wednesday.

Sony was first to the market with its Reader in 2006 but has struggled to keep up with rival Amazon.com.

In July, Amazon undercut competitors by offering a £89 wireless Kindle. The crowded e-reader market also includes traditional bookseller Barnes & Noble and electronics giant Apple, whose fast-selling iPad device has e-reader functions.

Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading unit, said the touchscreen was one of the top requests made by consumers, who are willing to pay more for extra functionality.

“Lowering prices to get cheaper and cheaper – that’s not our direction,” Haber said in an interview. “Our plan is not to race to the bottom.”

Haber said the company expected to sell more of its lower-cost pocket version last holiday season, but sales of its higher-priced touchscreen version outsold the cheaper one.

“People stepped up and spent another £66 to buy touchscreen capabilities,” he said.

Sony cut the prices of its last generation of e-readers in July. Prices on the new versions are lower than their predecessors when first launched.

The new pocket version Reader retails for about £125. Sony’s larger 6-inch screen version, which allows for extra memory, costs £149. Users of these two devices must plug in to a computer when it comes time to download content. Both are available immediately.

Sony is also offering a £199 “Daily Edition,” which, like the Kindle, is wireless. It has 3G and a larger screen. The Daily Edition rolls out in November.

Haber said overall sales of its readers are growing at three or four times last year’s levels.

Sony said it is also offering dictionaries in its new Readers and has been adding titles to its e-book store.

It plans to include reader reviews through an integration with social network site GoodReads, and will launch applications later in the year to interface with Apple’s iPhone and Android-based smartphones from Google Inc.