Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
To me, that illustrates that they are innovative. You need to push out a lot of products if you're an innovator. Most of them will fail, but alongside the failures will be the successes. Sony are very definitely an innovative company.
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Yes, Sony innovates.
They take a lot of risks; some visionary and necessary, some downright stupid...
Some is genuinely interesting, as in curiosity generating, but not in the sales-generating sense.
But they are also a "me-too" company, getting into and staying in (low-margin) businesses they should have long bailed out of.
Consider that Sony sells cheapie disposable batteries, earbuds, basic transistor radios of the kind that were SOA fifty years ago. Stuff they update on a yearly basis yet contributes little of anything to the bottom line. Hardly the output of an innovative high tech company. A lot of their legacy product lines are maintained solely for face-saving and/or nostalgia.
(It's almost like the old soviet government companies whose primary purpose was to keep people employed rather than making a quality product and/or a profit.)
The bulk of Stringer's tenure has been spent fighting his own staff, who keep on doing what they've always done, and keep on getting the same result: red ink.
Most of the divestitures he's managed--semiconductors, the LCD panel co-venture with Samsung--have simply provided the funds to keep on funding the money-losing parts of the company.
Consider how long it has been since Sony was even relevant to portable audio. Or TVs. They show off these great display prototypes but what they actually ship is pretty generic stuff at delusional prices.
(No, I'm not talking about their 2008-2010 readers.
)
I'm thinking of their Funai-quality TVs at Sharp prices.
A lot of it is that Sony is very much an inwards-focused company that has a real hard time accepting facts that deny their preconceived notions. They act as if they can simply wish the world to conform to their expectations.
Their recent (and surprising) moves to align themselves to ebook and tablet market reality is long overdue. But it might also be coming a wee bit late...