shinobi602
Member
How will they ever survive.
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Sony to slash 10,000 (6%) of workforce by year's end
- Thread starter pixelbox
- Start date
How will they ever survive.
I'm opening a kickstarter for those execs! They need food! How will they eat?!
Randolph Freelander
Member
Executives taking bonus cuts and cutting jobs only slow the inevitable. Unless they come up with something that earns them a ton of money and people become interested in the brand again it's only a matter of time before the liquidation begins.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Well Sony's first phone, the Xperia S, is in extremely high demand, outstripping supply in Europe atm. It seems like they have actually made their first good phone and they also have a Q3/4 flagship yet to come which will give them a shot at competing in Q4 where previously they would rely on their Q1/2 flagship which would be hopelessly outdated by the time holiday buying rolled around forcing them to cut prices to compete effectively with the new iPhone and Galaxy phones.
shinra-bansho
Member
Problem being they're (stubbornly) committed to a core competency in televisions - and flat panel televisions are still a loss maker.
Isn't Panasonic forecasting an annual loss of north of $10 billion.
His point being if they were going to cut certain types of electronics from their vast products gaming might make sense to drop based on profit.
I doubt they would do that as it is a good brand recognition thing but just because they do something well does not mean it is safe.
Holy shit! I knew panasonic had it bad but I only knew about the earlier forecast that was drasticly less and mainly due Sanoy deal and strong yen. Seems like Samaung is killing Japan's electric industry. Japan needs to quit tv business asap! I wonder what makes Samsung tick, it's amazing how big they have gotten during last decade.
BruiserBear
Banned
So I guess it would be better they just kept on the current path, and eventually went bankrupt?
Samsung, like Japanese companies decades ago, is much like a state sponsored corporation. Combined with a much more export driven approach (Japan still has / had a sizeable internal market) and cheaper currency, that makes for one hell of a competitive edge. Japanese companies are also facing a double / tripple whammy of expensive yen, worldwide economic slump, and a shrinking domestic market suffering from deflation and last year's earthquake. Unless they adapt in the next couple of years some might stop to exist.
Maybe Sony should get into imaging sensors and sensors for military applications... not happening under current Japanese law, though. Or finance... their insurance / banking unit makes more money than their tv business IIRC. ;p
This was my first reaction too, seems more fitting for OT.
Right. It makes you wonder if the company even has any core competencies left, or if their lunch has been entirely eaten by Samsung/Apple/Nintendo. Sony is a case study in why companies run entirely by engineers never pan out in the long run.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
Sony Ericsson made great phones back in the day, like the w800 series. But after buying the Xperia X10 Mini Pro, there's no way in Hell I'll ever buy another Sony phone.
@shinra-bansho
I stand corrected, I didn't know Panasonic had it that bad. I know Japanese Electronics manufacturing is struggling but I hadn't seen the latest forecast from Panny before. While Googling more info I found this article, pretty good read.
I stand corrected, I didn't know Panasonic had it that bad. I know Japanese Electronics manufacturing is struggling but I hadn't seen the latest forecast from Panny before. While Googling more info I found this article, pretty good read.
AndrewDean84xX
Banned
Wow.
phosphor112
Banned
I completely agree. They have become too big to manage. These cuts will be very beneficial to them. Their also refocusing on Digital Imaging, Games, Medical, and mobile has me happy. No more wasted resources on 5000 different Vios and cutting down on the model types for TV's can help streamline their manufacturing process, leading to cheaper production.
Sucks because they make the best TVs. Panasonic plasma :bow
LowEndTorque
Member
Sucks for those that will lose their jobs but it's been very clear for a long time that the company needed to take some drastic measures to stop from spiraling out of control. Hoping the company can pull through. Their existence in the realm of consumer electronics has been a good thing.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
I always thought Sony divisions need to stop screwing with each other. The reason they lost out to the iPod is because Sony music wouldn't let Sony electronics make players. They lost ground in the gaming area because the movie division required them to put a Blu-ray in the PS3.
Agreed..
The people thinking these are all signs of death to sony should remember that even somewhat healthy companies are trimming the fat. Even during a successful xbox year MS cut a lot of jobs. It's called redundancies. Also the workflow is changing in companies, just like we operate differently in our day to day lives so do the day to day operations of companies.
Lets also not forget how quickly everyone had pegged apple as dead and now look at them. Hardware wise, sony is the only company I put next to Apple, Sony just lacks the internal streamlined operations and the internal software to fully compete with an Apple (which is why MS taking over nokia and entering the console hardware business is so interesting, its the opposite end of the candle). It is a shame Sony didn't see the potential and buy WebOS, it is a perfect OS for sony tablets, tv's and phones, I liked webos more than I do android.
fluffydelusions
Member
Sucks for those losing their jobs but I guess it makes sense. I haven't been really impressed with anything Sony in a while from a tech standpoint and they do tend to overprice pretty much everything. I think only Samsung and apple can get away with that tactic nowadays.
gaming_noob
Member
I'd be perfectly fine with Sony games on PC. Bring it on!
H_Prestige
Banned
Other than the ps3 and that high end Vaio laptop, I don't think Sony makes a single good product. Generic stuff that the competition offers for less.
Vita
also Xperia S, though thats still more of an SE legacy.
murderofMonkey
Banned
cinema projectors, cameras and the cmos chips for the cams are a pretty big deal.
For sony its more about the internal streamline of their divisions and products, cutting out the older execs that held the company back is a step in the right direction. Even if ps3 beat the 360 and the wii, this restructuring at sony needs to happen.
depends on the region no?
Phones sell well outside of the US, they make money through internet service in japan.
Outside of the US microsoft isnt as popular, some countries are even looking into creating a linux standard to do away with microsoft windows as the industry standard. Companies and countries are tired of paying microsoft for licenses.
http://www.focus.com/fyi/50-places-linux-running-you-might-not-expect/
MS actually makes the worst products, starting with teh xbox, if not for the financial pool to pull from most companies would have folded after rrodgate, outside of gaming their windows mobile has falllen into the OTHER category, vista was a bust and windows 7 rushed to compete with linux who was dominating in the netbook arena and copied pretty much mac os x in the process.
that financial pool is just really from patents not from good products. google makes no money from a company running android as its free but ms makes money on patents used by android. shitty unsuccessful phone but successful patents.
The only thing MS does right is Servers and Excel and there really hasn't been any improvements here. My company was ready to switch out MS servers for ibm or others but they decided to buy out a few comanies and include the features we were paying for separately into a packaged bundle so that it would all run natively under one license. saved us the money of upgrading to another company. Which now a days is always about the cheapest options.
With the exception of excel that is pretty much unmatched, word and powerpoint haven't really advanced, if anything they usually get more complicated and resource hungry. I wonder how ms feels about the fact that since sales departments are now using tablets like the ipad for presentation instead of laptops they are switching to keynote and dumping powerpoint. I run open office at home myself. Windows OS I use is just primarily for gaming support, I'd run a hackingtosh or linux if I could on my own hardware.
Unless your an xbox fan or running a company with the need to push ms exchange, ms has nothing to offer the common consumer.
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
Pure BS. It lost money in the very beginning of the generation, it has not in many years. They are not subsidizing anything, true for the Vita from release day.
Panasonic's down 30% over the past year, bottomed out at 40%, and just took the Sanyo brand out behind the barn and shot it.
That said, the crunch for either (for Japanese manufacturing in general) has less to do with generalization and more to do with a punishingly high yen and a demographic crunch of high-seniority baby boomers. Generalization is unattractive to active investors, which is why it catches so much shit in the financial press, but not inherently bad.
Wrong.
They make incredible headphones, cameras, mp3 players, televisions (yes the high end ones), and the HMZ-T1. Also they have gorgeous smart phones that are mid-tier and reasonably priced (excluding Xperia Play).
The company needs to slash the fat and hire some new blood.
What?
They cut 6 percent of their workforce.
This isn't firing a few guys and starting over, this is maybe the 4th or 5th time in the last three years they have laid off employees, and almost all of those times it has been in the thousands of people.
You know what a step in the right direction would be? How about letting go of the mindset that you offer a premium product - because you don't. Sony's divisions are not the things that are holding them back, it is the mentality of their executives.
You need more employees when you are making multiple times more products.
Infinite Justice
Member
Godspeed Hirai, godspeed.
Uh...Windows 7? MS Office? Skype? To say that MS survies on it's patents alone is much worse than someone saying Sony is in deep trouble across the board now.
I know other folk have replied to you already but some of their cameras are very good. Ignoring the pricey NEXes I'm was thinking specifically about the A77.
I definitely don't agree with him either. Their Cameras, as of late, have been very good. I'm just not sure how successful they are from a profit point of view. I know they've been spending a lot of money advertising their cameras in the past few years.
They have said a number of times since Kaz took over that they won't be making as many products.
REMEMBER CITADEL
Banned
Sorry, but that's the easily verifiable truth. Had they not been selling the PS3 at a loss for several years (it first turned profitable in 2010, and Sony partially blamed it for losses that occurred after the $50 price cut in 2011, although it's hard to tell where it stands now because the PlayStation business is not a separate division anymore) - a significant loss initially, certainly not helped by two price drops just a year after the launch - it would never get in position to claim as much market share (and with that third party support) as it has now. Microsoft did the same with the original Xbox, and, to a significantly lesser extent, Xbox 360, but that doesn't change the fact that Sony was willing to swallow a tremendous amount of money just to keep PS3 (and initially Blu-ray) competitive.
At this point in time they can't afford to do that again.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Windows 7 - Again, rushed out to compete with linux in the netbook wars, pretty much an os x clone.
MS Office - Did you not read my post? Outside of excel, not much has improved. Also people are moving to keynote, openoffice.
Skype - Bought, not designed by MS. You could buy the company Apple but I wouldn't call you someone who makes great products, just someone who bought smart.
As far as sales, again ms is just smart at packaging and licenses. At my company, and you will find this to be true in most, we only started rolling out windows 7. XP due to internal applications not being compatible since they are developed in house was the os of choice until just recently depending on hardware and os limitations/requirements. Peoplesoft applications for instance.
So we bought new machines all the time but they were packaged with windows 7 os and ms office 2007 licenses. Speaking of, we also held out as long as we could with exchange server 2003 before upgrading to exchange 2010 just recently, so we held on to office 2003 as well. even though we had to pay for every windows 7 and office 2007 license we bought with a new dell computer, didn't matter if we used it or not the license is bundled with the pc purchase. MS will tell you the adoption rate was through the roof, it was not it was just packaged to sell bundled regardless if you used it or not.
Dreams-Visions
Member
herp derpety derp