Friday May 25, 2012

JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

Sony more than doubles full-year net loss forecast to Y220 bil

Business Feb. 02, 2012 - 04:15PM JST ( 5 )

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5 Comments

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CanadianJapanFeb. 02, 2012 - 05:18PM JST

Blaming the strong yen is just an excuse to hide the fact that Sony can't make good products. Operating income for the quarter was -92 billion yen, currency impact was 5.4 billion. They would have lost ONLY 85-86 billion without the yen impact. Sony's last hit product was the PS2 back in 2000. Go to Wallmart in Canada/U.S or in China, 90% of the TVs on display are Korean/Chinese/U.S(Vizio) products. Sony's cellphones/tablets have nothing to distinguish them from the competition. I went to Akihabara to check out Sony's Tablet S, just another (more expensive) Android tablet. Who's going to buy games for the PS Vita at 5000 yen a piece when you can get Angry Birds at 85? There might be a few hardcore gamers out there but Sony is totally out of touch with the mass markets. How can they blame the bad economy when Apple/Samsung and others are racking up record profits? Way to go Sony, 4 years in the red... Bankruptcy within 5 years?
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The Munya TimesFeb. 02, 2012 - 05:31PM JST

A key priority for Hirai will be turning around Sony’s struggling TV business - battered by competition from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Inc. and others.

What competition? Its not so long ago i read in the news that Sony teamed up with Samsung to develop a downgraded quality of HDTV in order to reduce consumer prices while keeping the skyrocketing profit.

Sony has either misinterpreted Morita's market philosophy or just has no clear conception that could make them fit in. Alternatively, I suspect that free looting is going on within the company. Sony is a walking dead man. Easy to lose reputation and almost impossible to rebuild it.
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herefornowFeb. 02, 2012 - 10:46PM JST

Sony is a walking dead man. Easy to lose reputation and almost impossible to rebuild it.

Munya -- spot on. And many in Japan will lay the blame on Stringer for that, and, certainly, a certain amount of it should be put on him. He is certainly no Carlos Ghosn. But, having worked with Nissan during the turn-around period, I can only imagine the resistence Stringer ran into at Sony from the die-hard tradionalists there. There were many people -- senior managers -- at Nissan who would have honestly rather seen the Renault-Nissan merger fail, simply becuase they were so resistent to taking direction from a foreigner (remember, Japan is different). Plus they knew that the banks and government would always bail them out if things did hit rock bottom. Sony and Japan's great success of the 70's and 80's has now become its greatest obstacle to re-structuring to meet the challenges of the 21st century and a global economy.
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Hide SuzukiFeb. 03, 2012 - 05:42AM JST

"He is certainly no Carlos Ghosn."

you are right about that. Stringer was a complete dissapointment, he couldn't do anything pretty much. I have no doubt Carlos Ghosn could change Sony unlike Stringer.

@The Munya Times "Easy to lose reputation and almost impossible to rebuild it."

In that case how do you explain America's big three came back (somewhat ) ? Their reputation went as low as anyone could possibly go, and some people started buying their vehicles again.
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The Munya TimesFeb. 03, 2012 - 01:17PM JST

In that case how do you explain America's big three came back (somewhat ) ?

I didn't say it is impossible, I said it is almost impossible. Depends on who they are. @Hereforenow gave the answer at the end of his comment. I personally used to like Sony and I don't have any bad wishes for them, but I just don't believe in their coming back.