When we talk about portable media players, we almost always use the iPod as our point of reference. But many don't realize that PMPs have actually been around for a over a quarter century! It's true. The Sony Walkman made it's debut way back in 1979. 
The Walkman was by all measures a huge success and a cultural phenomenon to boot. With such a huge head start, one can be forgiven for thinking Sony, not Apple, would be the company setting trends in how we consume media today.
Sony had the goods: PCs, laptops, memory sticks, playstations, stereos, cellphones, you name it. But they never brought it all together into a cohesive ecosystem. And that has cost them.
Apple has morphed into a younger, hipper version of the Japanese giant. By shedding the word "Computer" from its official moniker, Apple is no longer keeping this a secret. Apple is Sony 2.0.
On paper, it certainly seems like Sony has an advantage. Sony is not just an electronics company, but an entertainment content producer. Sony owns record labels; Sony owns movie studios. Yet Sony's immense vault of IP remains fractured. Sir Howard has not done a good job unifying everything, as Steve Jobs has already done (iTunes + Apple hardware). Corporations often fail to realize that creating value is application dependent. That is, it's not what you know, it's what you do with it. Sony knows a great deal as mentioned above, but it's Apple which has parlayed equivalent software + hardware knowledge into a media, entertainment and electronics powerhouse - all based on application.
My advice for Howard: don't screw up the last frontier -- GAMING. It's highly likely that Apple has some kind of a gaming strategy as part of its new roadmap. We've already heard whispers of Apple acquiring Nintendo - indeed the Wii is very Apple-esque; white and appealing to people of all ages.
This is where Sir Howard can perhaps redeem himself. Sony has a large installed base of PS2, PS3 and PSP users around the world. Can Sony introduce the seamless passing and storing of media content amongst all of its widgets? The holy grail in this game, at least for the consumer, is interoperability. Put another way: a buy once universe. If I buy the new Spiderman 3 blue-ray DVD release, I only want to pay for it once. If I chose to watch it on my PSP or my mp3 player, the hardware should facilitate the copying, reformatting and transfer among my Sony hardware. I shouldn't have to go to iTunes, lets say, and pay for another download. Nor should I be shackled with DRM constraints (at least with anything marked Sony on it). This is why people acquire illegal downloads today at something like a 20:1 clip over legal downloads. They want freedom.
Moving forward, Sony will have to realize what Apple already knows. User experience is king. Features matter, but it's all in the application.
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