This is pretty poorly written... Not only that, but it says Sony's 4K TV will cost $40k and lists article from Aussiegamer, which is another poorly written article - it has been known for a week that its price is $25k, and it has nothing to do with Sony losses at all. Whole article is soup of badly arranged refferences, most of which should have been summed up into one paragraph, instead of spending several pages on liabilities, ROE/ROA, stock performance, earnings and market cap - guess what Sherlock, they are all tied together.
Or she is showing Capital structure charts claiming how "debt is raising" when if you read all of those 3 numbers on the chart, you would realize they are reducing their equity, not raising their debts (which according to the chart are actually down from 2009).
I mean whole general idea and theme is good, but execution is pretty poor. Bloomberg, Businessweek and WSJ had a lot better article about the same subject. It seems like the author didnt understand a lot of what she was writing, basically reads like some forum post with refferences.
The article is likely used as the beginning of a marketing campaign (likely for WiiU). For a large scale launch, it is not uncommon for large corporations to seed the target audience with PR support first. Once the audience is prepped, the actual launch will follow. Is Nintendo going to organize a press conference soon ? The airline and diamond industries are known to do this when they enter a new market, or when they want to cultivate a new behavior.
If it's an objective investigative report, it won't use an ugly picture of Kaz Hirai in the article. The editorials are sensitive to PR reaction like this (because they get advertisements and sponsorships from companies), and will replace it with standard PR photos (or drawings) of these executives to play safe. OTOH, for political campaign ads, you'll often find messy, inconfident facial expressions of the opposing party to mess with their image.
Who is Emily Rogers anyway ? ^_^
The articles put together Sony's bad news over the last 10 years, but her interpretation may not be completely true or objective. It's very one sided (e.g., Announcing a $25K or $40K TV for the riches doesn't mean anything ! My friends sell $100K speakers per unit, doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's just not meant for us~). It looks like the truth is somewhere in between.
I love the article though. Sony, this is how you spend your marketing $$$. Not on useless, brand advertising, or replaying game ads. Go through the entire value proposition, and then spend on the full shebang; from PR or counter-PR like this all the way to pricing for mainstream. The Xperia division seems to be ramping up nicely with the latest fast and waterproof cellphones/tablets, plus Google announcing experimental Xperia-Nexus support. Ride on that.
As for engineering dictating the company's future, it's not entirely incorrect. The analysts are often wrong themselves also. Many top management were engineers by training (e.g., Steve Jobs). It means your top engineers are not sensitive/schooled to be product marketing gurus at all. Not every engineers can be. Find those who can cross between marketing and engineering, and use them wisely.
