Canis lupus
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the whole article
The article discusses the past 10 years of Sony and the financial side of things.
It compares the market cap and liabilities of some of the biggest companies with Sony. Presents graphs on capital structure and equities. Quotes market insiders and shareholders, and explains the war inside Sony, engineers against executives.
Here's the final thoughts:
The article discusses the past 10 years of Sony and the financial side of things.
It compares the market cap and liabilities of some of the biggest companies with Sony. Presents graphs on capital structure and equities. Quotes market insiders and shareholders, and explains the war inside Sony, engineers against executives.
Here's the final thoughts:
Is Hiroko Tabuci correct in his Wall Street Journal article about Sony’s engineers having too much power and control over Sony’s product lines? He is correct, but Sony’s executives should always take more accountability/responsibility for the company’s actions more than anyone else. When Howard Stringer was in office, all he did was blame earthquakes and the fall of the yen/dollar/euro, instead of admitting that Sony released products that weren’t major hits. The fact remains that Sony’s executives make a lot of excuses, they poorly communicate with their engineers, and this causes disorganization and confusion within the company. A great example would be when Sony’s PlayStation network was hacked by Lulzsec. Sony was more concerned about hiring lawyers and getting their insurance company to pay for the damage, than getting their engineers to fix the problem in a swift and efficient manner.
Because there is a lack of communication between the branches of Sony, Sony’s product line has no real identity right now. Every division and branch is made up of people who are doing their own thing, and not caring about what the rest of Sony is doing. That’s why the only thing that comes to a consumer’s mind about Sony products right now is, “Oh yeah. That’s the company that makes stuff I can’t afford unless I get multiple jobs. They put out $600 game consoles at launch, and $40,000 4K resolution televisions“. Sony is stuck. Everyone expects amazing quality and technological leaps from Sony products, but most people don’t have the money to buy them due to economical reasons. If Sony changed their strategy and started manufacturing cheap products, it would go against everything that the Sony brand stands for.
Sony is an example of a company that has become so large that they’ve lost focus of their main priorities. This is also a company that thinks they can afford tons of failures as long as they have a few successes along the way. But at what cost? At what cost can you keep launching products that don’t make a profit until the third or fourth year that it is released? At what cost can you keep launching failed proprietary formats like the UMD, or failed peripherals like PlayStation Move?
Sony releases brilliant products time from time. I am especially a big fan of their PlayStation brand. But Sony is not the Sony of the 90′s. Sony is not today’s Apple. Sony is not today’s Samsung. Sony is not today’s Microsoft.
It won’t be easy for Sony to return to their glory days after ten years of negative trends.