How the Tech Parade Passed Sony By - ?the end of Sony eReaders, the end of Sony?

[plib]

Originally Posted by monkeyluis

Companies try to expand too much without trying to focus on a few damn good products. Google is going the same way. Every week they have some new product. They have corporate ADD.

Even when they're not finding new products they're busy buggering up the ones they have. I've pretty much given up on Google News and am dreading the day they force their "new look" Gmail on me.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by plib

They have previous, right back to the rootkit fiasco and proprietary peripheral formats. And the bad feeling and refusal to buy Sony is going to last a lot longer than a month.

Oh, no question.
I was referring to the month-long PS Network outages and the chain of "another hacked Sony system/network" news. For a while there there was a new embarrassment every day.

As is, I'm in no rush to buy the Potter ebooks but even if I were I would wait a few months to see how their security holds up. And I'm likely to get a disposable credit card when I get around to it. Sony and network security are not exactly synonymous.

[sabredog]

Interesting article. At this stage at least I doubt Sony's ereader operations are in doubt.

http://publishingperspectives.com/20...e-takes-shape/

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

It's fairly easy to argue that they don't make the best flat screen.

(a) The three companies with the highest consumer satisfaction are Panasonic, LG and Samsung.

I don't actually like LG TVs. I've seen some with a problem of the content going off the sides of the screen. That to me is a big issue. I have a 40" Sony LCD TV that shows all the content on the screen and the picture quality is very nice.

If I was looking for a new TV, I would give Samsung and Panasonic a look as well as Sony, but I would not look at LG.

[Penforhire]

I'm very impressed with my GF's high-end Samsung TV. Come to think of it, same for my Samsung washer & dryer. Quite the change from a decade or two ago when I thought of Korean brands as junk, back when LG was Lucky Goldstar and the first generation Hyundai cars in America were embarassing.

Now they're largely at the top of their game and Chinese brands are the comers. Me? Buy a BYD car today? No way, no how. But maybe in a deacde or two ...

[Brainphart]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Well, I just purchased a Sony Bravia 55" smart TV with 3D. Sony still make arguably the best flat screen TV's currently.

Too bad they sold a large portion of their TV division to Samsung.

[caleb72]

I think it would be a shame if Sony disappeared from the ereader market. When I wanted to buy an ereader I went for Kindle because Sony's equivalent was way too expensive in comparison...but I did like that Sony device.

Their latest device also looks very nice. However, again at a price higher than the equivalent Amazon/Kobo device for me. Of course, by now I have brand intertia so it would actually require something specific to get me to change horses.

I'm sure if my K3 breaks down I'll just buy the latest Kindle - but we'll see. I don't have a walled garden - I have Calibre, so I can choose my next direction.

[ebusinesstutor]

Well, Sony lost me years ago when I bought a Sony Vaio laptop from them. The power supply failed and I purchased a third party power supply. The third party power supply worked just fine, but at one point the laptop was running slow so I wanted to reformat it. u

Unfortunately, they had some glitch in it that said it needed to be plugged in for a reformat even though it was plugged in and working fine. When I called the help desk for a work around, they just kept saying, "we can promise you a satisfactory experience unless you are using a Sony power supply."

So now I buy nothing from them - even if the price and product is fantastic. Lost me for life.

[HappyMartin]

I just yesterday bought a Sony TV. Quite excited. No TV at home up till now.

I didn't see much difference in the store between the Sony, Samsung and LG. The Sony was available online at a good price from a store I trusted and that did it for us.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

I just yesterday bought a Sony TV. Quite excited. No TV at home up till now.

I didn't see much difference in the store between the Sony, Samsung and LG. The Sony was available online at a good price from a store I trusted and that did it for us.

I've got a Sony TV, too. It's a few years old now, but I'm extremely happy with it. I've only owned two TVs in the last 20 years, both Sony. Had a CRT which lasted for about 15 years until the tube finally blew with a "pop" and a puff of smoke, followed by the current LCD which I've had for about 5 years now.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by Brainphart

Too bad they sold a large portion of their TV division to Samsung.

Samsung and Sony panels are the same for the most part. What makes a Sony TV different from a Samsung TV isn't the panel. Processing, backlighting, etc are also quite important. The TV divisions themselves are still separate from each other, and Sony still has theirs. The article is specifically talking about the panel manufacturing. While it is a shame that Sony sold their stake in panel manufacturing, it also frees them up to look at other technologies beyond Samsung's (say, LG's panels). Note that Sony also has their own Crystal LED tech they are playing around with while Samsung is playing around with OLED.

Considering Sony can make a TV with better PQ in some ways with Samsung's own panels, I'd be interested to see if Sony can make a good IPS-based TV that doesn't have LG's usual problem of low contrast in their sets.

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

Sony still believes their products to be worthy of the premium price they charge. I like some of their products (have one of their TV's, their Playstation consoles, PSP, and their readers), but I'll be first to admit that they are often-times WAY too expensive out of the gate.

Quit with the Sony-tax, and people may be more attracted to them again.

Part of the problem I think is that Sony tends to pack in too much tech in products that drive up the price. Their game systems for example, are loss leaders or break even at launch. Yet they are really expensive. Why? The tech they put in. To get the price down, they would have to rip out some of that tech to do so.

With readers, it boils down to two things: 1) The statement above with earlier readers made from metal and other more expensive materials that are harder to manufacture with. 2) They didn't want to play the loss leader game with the hardware itself, unlike Amazon and B&N.

Unfortunately, when your competition is using the razor blade model, you get to be the one that has the "<Insert Brand Here>-tax" unless you do the same thing. Especially when people don't care why it is cheaper (and that they are paying for it on the back-end), just that it is. Cell phones are another great example of this weird quirk of human thinking.

Sony's real problem is that they want to pack in as much stuff as possible to be "bleeding edge", or will use more expensive materials to get a "quality feel". And the end result is that their stuff is more expensive at launch because of it.

[CyGuy]

A friend of mine purchased a Sony laptop a couple of years ago. I have never in my life seen a computer with more built-in: spam, spyware, malware, trialware, bloatware, etc. It was so bad that a format and re-installation of the OS was the only fix. The boot time went from 7+ minutes to about 1 minute after the rebuild...

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by Brainphart

Too bad they sold a large portion of their TV division to Samsung.

I had no idea they did that.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

A friend of mine purchased a Sony laptop a couple of years ago. I have never in my life seen a computer with more built-in: spam, spyware, malware, trialware, bloatware, etc. It was so bad that a format and re-installation of the OS was the only fix. The boot time went from 7+ minutes to about 1 minute after the rebuild...

When you haven't made a profit in years and you lost 6 Billion on your last report, I guess you are willing to prostitute yourself pretty d*mn cheap.

I am reminded of that statement long ago about Mighty Carthage.

"Even this shall pass."

I guess that is happening to Sony, but I still hope not.

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've got a Sony TV, too. It's a few years old now, but I'm extremely happy with it. I've only owned two TVs in the last 20 years, both Sony. Had a CRT which lasted for about 15 years until the tube finally blew with a "pop" and a puff of smoke, followed by the current LCD which I've had for about 5 years now.

Both my TVs are Sanyos. One is nearly 30 years ago (bought in the 'mid 80s), the other nearly 20. Heh, both are so old they have coaxial inputs (though also RCA jacks, so I can hook some modern stuff up to them)

By contrast, my experience with Sony products is that they break after a few years. PS1 - cd drive stopped reading discs. PS2 - dvd drive stopped reading discs. PSP-1000 - screen cracked while I was taking the battery out because it froze. PSP-2000 screen cracked when it got too cold (not really Sony's fault, but the power company, though it was the only LCD screen affected). Sony portable DVD player - stopped reading discs (you'd think I would have learned by then about Sony's disc drive quality).

But the problem is, even if Sony were making quality products, like TVs, they really aren't making money off of them. Thanks to corporate bloat and bad exchange rate, they lose money on virtually everything. And that's not going to change. They've just can't compete with smaller, leaner companies, especially if they are based on countries like Korea (or outside of Japan)