Interesting article about the state of Sony

A story from Scandinavia: Sony was very big here, too. Then decided to go to "specalised Shops" to justify the higher price. They also joined with Ericsson, a mobile phone corporation that was in deep trouble to form Sony/Ericsson. That was a total flop. Ericsson technology and design was a total disaster from the beginning. Now hasselbld has teamed with Sony, to build a overpriced Sony Digital camera. The bottom line is they think they are SO BIG, not to really listen to the market. That is precisely what killed KODAK.
 
It's an opinion piece. Highly subjective with lots of assumptions and hearsay.

Sure, Sony is having losses, but that's expected. You can only sell so many TVs before everybody has a 1080p panel. 3D didn't bring much change. 4K resolutions might change that soon.
 
bugmenot said:
It's an opinion piece. Highly subjective with lots of assumptions and hearsay.

Sure, Sony is having losses, but that's expected. You can only sell so many TVs before everybody has a 1080p panel. 3D didn't bring much change. 4K resolutions might change that soon.
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At some point of time enough consumers do get the feeling that the TV they have already on the wall is "good enough" i.e. in terms of real estate (size) and image quality. The improvements to the next generation TV might be visible but the old one is not so bad either.

So when a consumer product area is already "very good" then the incentive to go for "extremely good" is pretty little - consequently the industry has to come up with something new.

There will not be a new groundbreaking inventions every 2 or 3 years. Then the stacking of additional nice to have features for marketing differentiation starts. Once this is over the price war kicks in and obviously then profit goes down if a company is trying to fight that battle when they should have better decided to get out of this product category. Just my 0.02$.
 
Interesting read, but I think too much opinion and selective reporting going on there.
I have no idea where Sony is going. But any company as large and diverse as Sony, with it's various businesses competing in dynamically changing markets is certain to do some things that, in retrospect, turn out to be wrong.

That does not necessarily mean that Sony is dead or dying.

They will die if they fail to react to a changing world; but they will probably thrive (eventually) if they allow themselves to change how they do things. Then of course, the world will change again, and they also must go round and round again.
 
I agree with large parts of what the article says. Sony has become very unattractive in many markets: music players, TVs, phones, etc.
However, I've been quite impressed by how they have entered the camera market and become the number three brand name in the business in just a few years next only to Nikon and Canon. It would be interesting to know if the camera division is profitable.
 
If this guy could have gotten his points across in three or four paragraphs, it might have been an interesting article. He seems so fond of his own words, he goes on and on without actually reaching any solid conclusions. It would be an interesting feature for a prof to take to a journalism class as an example of "how not to write." Browse the web and you'll find much better (and more concise) coverage of Sony's current woes. TW (Oh, and never trust a journalist who can't spell "knapsack.")
 
But does it really matter if someone else will produce the same stuff with a different sticker on it ? I would be concerned more if company manufacturing film like let say Fuji went bust .
 
Rangefinderfreak said:
Now hasselbld has teamed with Sony, to build a overpriced Sony Digital camera. The bottom line is they think they are SO BIG, not to really listen to the market. That is precisely what killed KODAK.
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But that franken-NEX is not the only product they offer. There are plenty of cheaper, better choices from Sony...unlike the other European brand that we all love here on RFF.
 
Archlich said:
But that franken-NEX is not the only product they offer. There are plenty of cheaper, better choices from Sony...unlike the other European brand that we all love here on RFF.
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The "other brand" seems to be hugely profitable... Like Audi, mercedes, etc...
I happened to be in a position of talking to a guy that moved his (finnish owned) company from China to USA, as his main market was in USA. He was very well knowledgeable of german style manufacturing. Zero loss in quality control, every automobile rolling out of the factory was PERFECT. he said that his production in USA had a better margin of profit, as he used the same technique as the germans. He paid the workers more, when they made products that had better quality and no manufacturng rejects. His frends in businees asked why he paid more than was necessary? His explanation was simple: Look, a product has different basic cost, material cost, wages for workers, basic cost when setting up the factory and so on. The wages are a very small portion, the materials and parts from subcontractors is the biggedst, by a large marigin. If the product is bad and has to be rejected in quality control, bad but if it causes a return after sales because of problems, even worse. as it has to be distributed, sold and returned VERY VERY EXPENSIVE. If I pay let´s say 50% more for the workforce to make products with ZERO rejects, I still gain in the other costs as material will be total loss, the product in garbage or recycling and so on. The guy is VERY successiful in USA
 
ok I think sony retail stores are failures but Sony NEx and Playstation strive Sony to become a second option.

Just as Pepsi is to Cola , in my opinion..

And they also achieved the smallest all in one digital full frame camera so I can safely say they are not doing anything wrong like Blockbuster did..
 
The article certainly emphasizes Sony's shortcomings. It's worth iterating that Sony has dominated for huge chunks of time any market segment they've chosen to compete in; of course no one company can dominate a market segment indefinitely. Sony, as a company, moves very quickly (certainly faster than its American or Korean counterparts). You can see how fast Sony is moving in the CSC market (something Konica/Minolta never had)! I would not discount Sony just yet.
 
I think we need to put the article about Sony into perspective. Here's a similar story from a different angle, this time relating to Sharp and headlined "Sharp warns that it may not survive," appearing in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/01/sharp-doubles-loss-forecast-japan. That article suggests, I believe correctly, that Sony is in a somewhat better position than at least some of its Japanese electronics brethren, noting that "Sony maintained its full-year forecast as costs have fallen." However, the problems of Japanese electronics giants are largely shared, and relate to low consumer confidence in many parts of the developed world, marketing difficulties, the stubbornly high yen -- and one should perhaps mention the relatively recent steep fall in China's interest in Japanese goods, although that postdates the main problems that are behind the woes we have been discussing. Nettar
 
Sony has always been quality. I came across them for the first time when I was working for a Japanese radio company. We used to take competitor's products apart to see what made them tick; the Sony was always a work of art on the inside where the consumer never got to see it.

It's an extremely large and diversified company but remains committed to quality, and they listen to their customers. I certainly don't think it's dying as this rather poor article suggests. One of our TV sets, a Sony, finally died a couple months ago. It was 27 years old and had been working fine. So I replaced it with a spiffy new flat panel and we're really enjoying it. A Sony of course. And don't get me started on my NEX-7, and the RX100 is one of Time magazine's best inventions of 2012...
 
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