What is up with Sony these days?

[busydude]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/business/global/sony-revises-expected-loss-to-6-4-billion.html

A loss of $6.4 Billion, share value basically halved in less than a year and it is rumored to layoff 10k employees.

Yeah, it is been really long time since Sony delivered an appealing product, but WTF were they doing all this time?

 

[Red Squirrel]

lol I was thinking the same.

If I ran a company and saw a full quarter in the hole I would act then, not years later lol.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Yeah, it is been really long time since Sony delivered an appealing product, but WTF were they doing all this time?

I'll disagree with that point.

The PS3 Slim is a nice console, even if they did take out the PS2 Slim chips to cut costs. It works great as a DVD + blu-ray player, for netflix streaming, Amazon Prime videos, ... it even plays games. I use it much more than my 360 except when I'm playing some 360-exclusive that doesn't have a PC version.

I bought a Sony receiver for my home theater last June. The price was good and it's worked perfectly.

Sony TVs get very good reviews, they have just been priced way too high which has cost them the market and caused a big chunk of their losses. I have a Samsung.

 

[Pocatello]

Too many competitors, not enough innovation.

 

[FoBoT]

almost everything eventually stagnates
IBM
Microsoft, only reason MS still makes $ is due to monopoly

 

[SunnyD]

I'll disagree with that point.

The PS3 Slim is a nice console, even if they did take out the PS2 Slim chips to cut costs. It works great as a DVD + blu-ray player, for netflix streaming, Amazon Prime videos, ... it even plays games. I use it much more than my 360 except when I'm playing some 360-exclusive that doesn't have a PC version.

I bought a Sony receiver for my home theater last June. The price was good and it's worked perfectly.

Sony TVs get very good reviews, they have just been priced way too high which has cost them the market and caused a big chunk of their losses. I have a Samsung.

Problem is even while the PS3 is a "nice console", they still sell every unit at a loss.

Their TV's are overpriced, and they don't really have any "value" lines of their products anymore. Most people, especially in this economy, are NOT willing to pay a premium for a name anymore.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Overpricing their electronics and selling PS3s at a loss since its release is apparently not a tenable strategy for success in this economy.

 

[SandEagle]

uh, the PS3 and Vita are very appealing products. so is the Vaio, their TVs, PS Move, etc. where have you been hiding?

problem is most of their stuff is way overpriced

 

[MarkXIX]

<redacted> Samsung.

This is the answer.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

uh, the PS3 and Vita are very appealing products. so is the Vaio, their TVs, PS Move, etc. where have you been hiding?

problem is most of their stuff is way overpriced

Yes, they are appealing products in the same way that a Ferrari is an appealing car. But not everyone can afford a Ferrari. You're not going to see a lot of volume sales when your products perform on par with other brands that cost ~75% of your asking price.

 

[CrackRabbit]

uh, the PS3 and Vita are very appealing products. so is the Vaio, their TVs, PS Move, etc. where have you been hiding?

problem is most of their stuff is way overpriced

That and they have tried shoving proprietary formats for EVERYTHING down consumers throats since the late 70s with only 1 real success out of all of them.

 

[SandEagle]

Yes, they are appealing products in the same way that a Ferrari is an appealing car. But not everyone can afford a Ferrari. You're not going to see a lot of volume sales when your products perform on par with other brands that cost ~75% of your asking price.

fail analogy. not everyone can buy a Ferrari on a credit card. everything else, why not?

 

[Cal166]

Too many competitors, not enough innovation.

Is it true to say that most companies are have issues coming up with new stuff due to all the patents out there that prevent most companies to bring out something new? Like AOL sold a $1Billion of patents

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Their line up of DLSR's is pretty amazing -

great price points, good feature sets.......

 

[Kadarin]

Sony should die, or suffer a major reorg. I won't buy anything by them after the rootkit fiasco and also their anti-customer stance with taking features out of the PS3.

 

[Exterous]

I bought a Sony receiver for my home theater last June. The price was good and it's worked perfectly.

Sony TVs get very good reviews, they have just been priced way too high which has cost them the market and caused a big chunk of their losses. I have a Samsung.

Interesting - while I haven't paid much attention lately I remember Sony being repeatedly discarded from receiver discussions on AVS forum

I agree that their TVs are too high in price for the average consumer who is looking for a cheap TV that is 'good enough'

I think a lot of it has to do with a slipping company reputation

 

[alien42]

Sony has been in the red the past three years.

 

[alent1234]

Is it true to say that most companies are have issues coming up with new stuff due to all the patents out there that prevent most companies to bring out something new? Like AOL sold a $1Billion of patents

no
most patents are part of standards pools and easily licensed for low cost

 

[Soccerman06]

Um the ps3 has been in profits since early 2010 for yall that dont know

 

[NikolaeVarius]

There's also that entire Tsunami thing that wiped out entire factories, supply chains, warehouses, and wrecked the economy of Japan for a while.

But yeah, they need a restructuring. They make really good stuff, and I still like buying Sony stuff, but prices need to come down a bit.

 

[vi edit]

They are in the same shoes as GE & GM. Just far too big to reasonably manage the enormous portfolio of products they have under their massive umbrella of business units.

Mitsubishi, Philips, Siemens ect..all the same fate. Just far too many different niche markets to push under the same namebrand. At least Philips, GE, and Siemens can rape the medical industry with lucrative hardware prices to help cover the black hole of budgets in other areas.

The internet and the Koreans have really hurt Sony's business model. The internet hurt because people now had more options available to them...both in terms of research (Hey maybe Sony isn't so great!) and purchase...you can buy something from Amazon for 75% less...or more than what Best Buy/Sears/Local electronics vendor offered.

And the Koreans are making a push because they aren't spending bucket loads of money and effort trying to creat new standards to cram down peoples throats. They offer compelling products at good prices and have a half a clue on how to set up a product line from low end to high end.

 

[alent1234]

korean companies don't have a movie/music arm telling the hardware guys to cripple their products because of piracy

 

[vbuggy]

They are in the same shoes as GE & GM. Just far too big to reasonably manage the enormous portfolio of products they have under their massive umbrella of business units.

Mitsubishi, Philips, Siemens ect..all the same fate. Just far too many different niche markets to push under the same namebrand. At least Philips, GE, and Siemens can rape the medical industry with lucrative hardware prices to help cover the black hole of budgets in other areas.

The internet and the Koreans have really hurt Sony's business model. The internet hurt because people now had more options available to them...both in terms of research (Hey maybe Sony isn't so great!) and purchase...you can buy something from Amazon for 75% less...or more than what Best Buy/Sears/Local electronics vendor offered.

And the Koreans are making a push because they aren't spending bucket loads of money and effort trying to creat new standards to cram down peoples throats. They offer compelling products at good prices and have a half a clue on how to set up a product line from low end to high end.

Pretty much this. As much as I like a lot of what Sony makes at the highest end, I know no-one else is buying them because they all believe (partially incorrectly I think, but that's by the by) it's overpriced. They're getting killed at the mid-to-low end by Samsung and LG. You can't generate profit from halo products.

 

[vi edit]

Pretty much this. As much as I like a lot of what Sony makes at the highest end, I know no-one else is buying them because they all believe (partially incorrectly I think, but that's by the by) it's overpriced. They're getting killed at the mid-to-low end by Samsung and LG. You can't generate profit from halo products.

I also think that the electronics industry has been turned on it's head in the last 10-15 years. Sony has some very nice TV's in the high end of the market, and always has. Their XBR lineup has been stellar for years(decades, even). But the quality and content you can get now in other brands is unlike it has ever been. Panasonic and Samsung can offer TV's that do about 90% of what a Sony TV does for 75% or less of the price. Most people don't care about that extra 10%.

Same thing with receivers. Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha have been able to place competitive products on the shelves that took away Sony's appeal.

And in Sony's music front...they killed themselves with DRM, proprietary formats, and simply not taking Apple seriously.

The Playstation brand is really the only widely recognized device they have have anymore and that launch and execution was run by a group of chimps.

I've got limited exposure to the Japanese culture/mentality with some medical equipment that I have to support and the front end applications you have to use to operate them. If there's anything I can infer from that experience it's that they are *VERY* reluctant to change and outside opinion. Combine that with the sheer size of their organization and it's hard to be competitive anymore. And then toss in an erosion of your brand recognition and it's really a bag of hurt.

It's really not that different from Apple in the years leading up to the iPod release. But at least Apple essentially focused on one device that was in growing demand, marketed the shit out of it, grew a following and then branched out with a lineup of desirable products that integrated well.

 

[vi edit]

Oh yeah, can't forget about JVC. Another Japanese electronics company that shared a lot of success through the 80's and early 90's that now has no real brand recognition or significant success.