Sony to add Skype Web phone function to PSP: Nikkei
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp plans to add an Internet phone function to its PlayStation Portable (PSP) game player in cooperation with eBay unit Skype to stir up demand, the Nikkei business daily said on Saturday.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second act of a communications push Sony has been building around the PSP since mid-2007, when it announced a plan with BT to bring advanced net-based communications to the handheld. Through the rest of the year the story kept drifting toward telephony proper, with Sony Ericsson PSP-phone talk in June and fresh PlayStation phone speculation out in November.
What changed this week is specificity: Nikkei names the partner — eBay-owned Skype — and Reuters carries the report, while an Engadget item two days earlier flagged that Sony's own CES press materials hinted at Skype on the PSP. The relationship remains unconfirmed by either company, so everything here rests on a named-source business-daily report ahead of CES.
First-order effects
- If confirmed at CES, the PSP becomes one of the first mainstream handheld consoles to carry a full VoIP client, giving Sony a demand lever for a device whose core game lineup alone was not stirring the market — the stated aim per Nikkei is to 'stir up demand'.
- Skype, operating inside eBay, gains distribution beyond the PC onto a mass-market consumer device, extending its reach without building hardware of its own.
Second-order effects
- BT's earlier PSP communications arrangement now looks partially superseded or absorbed: Sony appears to have chosen a global consumer VoIP brand over the carrier-style partnership it announced in May 2007, a signal to other operators that platform owners will pick their own communications partners.
- Rival handheld makers face pressure to answer with communications features of their own, since 'plays games and makes free calls' resets buyer expectations for what a portable console should do.
Third-order effects
- The persistent PSP-phone rumor stream alongside this move points toward convergence between handheld consoles and mobile handsets — a structural threat to carrier voice revenue if gaming devices route calls over Wi-Fi instead of cellular networks.
- For eBay, putting Skype on third-party devices would mark a shift from owning the client experience to licensing the service into other companies' hardware, the model that determines whether Skype scales beyond its desktop base.
The trend: Portable entertainment devices are absorbing Internet-telephony functions, pulling gaming hardware and mobile communication onto a collision course with carrier-controlled voice.