kowenicki said:
I have no idea what the number of employees has to do with it.. but here are the three main measures Market cap ( the real true measure ) Microsoft $216 billion Sony $22.77 billion Microsoft 10 times bigger in real measurable size Revenue Microsoft $61.17 billion Sony $82.22 billion Profit Microsoft $16 billion Sony $1 billion LOSS
So you are right on turnover... worryingly they can turnover $82 billion dollars and still make a loss. So unless they can cut costs big time all over the place any price aggression in any market (TV, Phones or Gaming) seems fool hardy.
However, MS is 10 times bigger than MS and could almost buy up Sony from 1 years profits... Sony as we know made a loss. |
You're right that it is worrying that a 82 billion dollar turnover can result in a deficit, quite a feat indeed.
However, Sony is listed as a significantly bigger company on all kinds of lists, scuh as this;
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2009/full_list/index.html
The market cap will always be bigger on software companies, Google would be another example. This is due to the fact that in terms of assets, the production of software and subsequent rights to the licenses that are implicit have an entiely different form of value than physical hardware which has a more direct, "tangible" value in comparison. Seeing as Sony is primarly a hardware manufacturer/distributor, they won't reach the same market cap. In contrast, fluxuation in stock will more greatly affect software manufacturers as said values remain more liquid as they cannot be measured literally against a set of retail guidelines and direct hardware value.
All in all; Microsoft has the highest market cap, no doubt, but Sony remains the bigger company.
It doesn't really matter though, the console wars are not decided on turnovers (not directly anyways) and number of employees, nor the ownership of Operational System licenses or lack thereof, as we can clearly see... 
