| alephnull said: 2) Where and in what currency is most of Sony's manufacturing costs. Matsushita (Panasonic) is a terrible company to compare Sony against as they along with Cannon are notoriously Japanese (ie. significant proportion of production occurs in Japan, they still adhere to lifetime employment, and growth is mostly organic). Sony on the other hand is notoriously "American" in that they outsource heavily, employment policies are more in line with international norms, and they have never eschewed mergers and aquisitions as a means of company growth. For both SCE and Microsoft I would expect most of the components to be manufactured in taiwan or mainland china (by a taiwanese companies operating in china). Now, whereas I know the PRC has allowed the RMB to appreciate significantly (as measured by percentage increase on an annual basis) since the begging of the year, I haven't seen or done any such analysis on the NTD recently. Usually, the taiwanese follow the lead of Japan currency-wise (in many subtle ways Japan still has suzerainty over the place), however these aren't normal economic times. |
Suffice to say that the currency factor has already greatly impacted Sony's profit forecast which was done back in the Q2 report, when the currency problem wasn't as bad as it is now.
The Panasonic thing is just one more indication. The one I just mentioned and Sony's CFO declarations during that report are much more telling, and they all point in the same direction.
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