News 

The company says that a new range of flash memory-based portable music players will be able to play both MP3 and Atrac formats. Previously Sony had insisted that its customers use its own proprietary Atrac format, forcing them to convert if they wanted to change to and from MP3.

The situation has become more pressing as MP3 continues to dominate the market as the de facto industry standard despite the efforts of some of the world's biggest IT companies to supercede it.

Sony now says that it is working on ways that customers might be able to convert their existing players to support MP3 as well as Atrac. This will help Sony compete with market leader Apple whose iPods support both MP3 and its proprietary Fairplay format. However, the company has not made any comment on whether it plans to offer any format other than Atrac via its Sony Connect online music store.

It also says that it hopes to be able to launch MP3 compatible players in Europe by the end of the year.