| jkimball said: You are probably right about the price cut. But there is no way they have 12 months to think about this. No way. Decisions need to be made...now. Let me put it this way: you don't want a price cut because it will cost $1B. but you are willing to wait around a year, which by your own math, also will cost a $1b? if the world economy hadn't just collapsed, then they might have a year. But it did. So they don't have a year. They have to take a 1B risk by cutting the price, or get the heck out. And it will happen in early spring.
personally I'll wait for the firesale :) |
If my assessment of Sony's holiday quarter is correct, by the time spring comes Sony will already have announced significant measures to reduce costs. That would for sure include significant job cuts, and perhaps exiting some markets which allows them to sell off assets. I don't think job cuts alone would be enough as a response to a 1-3 billion dollar loss, but it's not easy to predict what products they could get rid of.
I'm thinking that one of the easiest things to do could be selling off their 50% stake in Sony Ericsson. That wouldn't affect their business much. Another good idea would be to downsize or eliminate their music publishing business, CDs are dying anyway. Blu-Ray should stay for sure, after all it's their first winning format and it probably doesn't incur big costs at this point.
If the PS3 is one of the unlucky products (I don't think it's very likely, not in the next few months at least), I'm guessing you'd get your firesale before spring. If they don't get rid of the PS3, you won't get any price cut or firesale though, they'll have to be very careful about wasted money.
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