Sony's plan to broaden the scope of its Memory Stick format to other areas than data storage took a step forward this week when the company unveiled a series of prototypes of MS peripherals it has in the pipeline.

Sony showed off a GPS tracker, a digital camera module and a fingerprint scanner. It also reiterated it is working on Ethernet, audio-in and Bluetooth wireless networking modules, but none of these made it to Comdex, where the other devices were shown.

The modules that were on display are rather cute, and if Sony gets them to market in the form shown this week, it may well have a winner on its hands. So far Memory Stick is widely supported across Sony's PC, PDA and peripherals lines, but other manufacturers seem less keen. After all, what's one more storage format in the scheme of things? Reinventing MS as a broader peripheral connectivity mechanism could well persuade them otherwise.

The devices Sony showed off this week are all due to ship in the latter half of 2001, the company said, which is a long way off in this business. ®