Sony makes for a curious example as they have so many divisions that sometimes collaborate and sometimes undercut each other, but the memory stick came out of what Sony referred to as their “VAIO Center”. It was an offspring of their VAIO computing business as can be seen on this press release from 1998 as it was originally released as a memory card a PC card so you could use it with your computer.

It’s clear that Sony’s long term plans were to make this a bridge product between their consumer electronics business and their computing business, but it falls right into the point above that this idea that came from their computing side simply didn’t work in consumer electronics. How many people buying Sony televisions or music systems, their traditional consumer electronics market, are concerned with whether these devices are memory stick capable, as opposed to those who purchase sony laptops and pc-dependant cameras? I’m willing to bet that those memory card slots that Sony has included since 1998 on various consumer electronics devices like video cameras and televisions go largely ignored by the customers who buy them.

As for the non-Sony formats, I generally only see them used in devices that are dependant on a PCs abilities.