Quote:
Originally Posted by boswd
I can see Sony jumping into the LCD screen market. But they'll screw it up by charging something like $500 for it.
I don't know who's in charge of the North American Operation but lets look at their track record this past decade.
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If I was the CEO in Japan I would be like "What the bleepedy bleep is going on in North America?"
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I wouldn't be so quick to blame the local Sony unit chiefs; it isn't clear they have enough autonomy to screw up much beyond their marketting.
I'm hardly a Sony fan (far from it, in fact) and I agree that Sony has pretty much screwed up everything they've launched in the last decade-plus but the core misteps all seem to have originated in Japan, mostly by their clear inability to read market trends and consumer needs.
Sony simply doesn't do integration well; not in the company structure, where individual units regularly undercut each other or ignore mandates from the Board, costing the company billions (it got Kutaragi fired but by then it was too late), and not in products. Ten years after iPod launched, Sony *still* doesn't have a handle on how to use online services and content to add value to hardware or vice-versa. Add-in that Sony doesn't seem to bother with market research or customer preference. (Three years after it became clear people buy Kindles because of Whispernet and the bookstore, Sony is still insisting touchscreens are a more compelling feature than either. Which it is. For 4 percent of the market. Maybe.)
Trying to guess which way those guys will go is a job even the Pythia at Delphi would refuse. They are just as likely to drop out of the market next week as they are to introduce a 3D grayscale ebook reader. They have a solid brand and rabidly loyal customers. But their management (whether in NA or Japan) is just totally out of it.
There's no telling if they'll even notice their product line is in trouble.
For all we know, they might actually be satisfied with a few thousand units a month in sales, as if they were a China-sourced online-only startup.
