NY Times: How the Tech Parade Passed Sony By

[CChaos]

An interesting article. All in all, I'd say that it's going to be over the next five years that they will show if they're willing to cooperate internally and move ahead or let the sum of their parts wither and die off the central body. It might seem a little backward, but it isn't the consumers, technically, that mean success or failure of the company on a grander scale.

Let's take the example of Microsoft for a moment. With the market shift in PCs going on, Microsoft has been trying to find their footing in new areas and have been working their asses off to do it. The reason why? Despite the fact that Windows is still insanely dominant (I believe numbers on Windows 7 still put the OS well over a hundred million sales), the shareholders in the company were starting to get nervous and wanted to see what they were intending to make sure the future was a bright and cheery one. They haven't been able to light the world on fire and it's apparently been making their stocks waver a bit in the past year. Nervous stockholders who flee can cause some definite harm.

Sony has a worse problem in its constant losses, but that issue is still the same. Success is an insanely variable concept. The consumers need to buy, of course, and the product needs to be profitable. But there's also those stockholders that need to be satisfied in their investment. Sony is a publicly traded company, after all. These guys are people who like making money and four years of losses are no doubt starting to make them a little itchy about that cash, especially since the value has contracted to a quarter in like four years. Simply standing back and being happy with sales that are below what the investors want isn't going to make them happy when they will want results that raise that stock back up. More will flee of Sony doesn't pull out something amazing that recreates them into a market leader.

Personally, I think it'll be a rough road and Sony should be able to manage it, but they've got a lot riding on surpassing the status quo and rejoining the ranks of the elite.