Proprietary storage device, competitively mis-priced hardware, lack of compelling exclusive content... it all points to a gross misjudgment of the marketplace. The sales of the device reflect this.
Sony is making money in the gaming division, but Vita is never going to be a major contributer unless they change strategy.
PS3 doesn't have proprietary memory. Anyone can use an off the shelf laptop hard drive and put it in their PS3. If anything, Vita having proprietary memory is exactly the opposite approach of the PS3 and may end up allowing them to recoup some costs like Microsoft does with their hard drives that are proprietary.
Vita isn't competitively mis-priced to a large degree. $250 isn't break-the-bank expensive like the PS3 was. But more importantly, they're not losing massive amounts (hundreds of dollars) on Vita hardware like the PS3 was. That's more important than how competitively its priced relative to their competition.
Lack of compelling software may be true right now for the mainstream, but for core gamers (who Sony is aiming for right now) their launch lineup is demonstrably better than either the 360 or PS3 had by a long shot.
I think there are huge issues with the Vita in terms of being a big success for Sony, but at the same time there's not much risk in the Vita causing catastrophic losses for them either. At worst, the division manages to just sort of coast along breaking even, but not really providing much cash flow to the company's business.
There's a huge market for them if they embrace smartphones once they become powerful enough. If Sony is smart, they could potentially turn every smart phone into a Vita for the negligible price of a controller, and use that huge audience to sell software.
They are absolutely insane if they do not take this window of opportunity to do that.