Legend11 said:
I think Sony's biggest problem is that they're such a diverse company that it ends up really hurting them compared to the competition.
Take Sony losing its dominant position in the portable music player market to Apple for example. For years Sony refused to release a media player that supported MP3s due to the concerns of the music industry which they are a part of. You can see just how disastrous that decision was.by looking up old postings from angry and frustrated owners of their players. Apple of course had very innovative designs which helped immensely but they also supported MP3 and basically gave consumers what they wanted. By the time Sony relented and gave their customers what they had been asking for it was already too late as many had already left.
This isn't just an isolated case either because their older DVD players used to not support XviD and DivX. I can remember friends basically using their existing Sony DVD players as a backup and getting another cheaper brand as their main one. That lead to them becoming extremely weary of Sony players and simply buying a competitors product (usually already cheaper so the choice was made even easier) so they wouldn't somehow get screwed again.
This of course brings up another problem Sony has and that is pricing and no amount of synergy is going to fix the problem they have with the amount of manufacturing they do in Japan. Simply put it gives their competitors a price advantage which used to not be a problem when quality made up for that advantage. But now in the age of disposable electronics there are far fewer people willing to spend hundreds if not thousands more for a slight increase in quality.
Sony as a Japanese company is burdened by Japanese tradition when it comes to employees (don't get me wrong it's very admirable) but it's hard to imagine them getting rid of almost all of their Japanese manufacturing facilities and laying off tens of thousands of Japanese workers. It would be disastrous for their image in Japan and goes against their very culture. But if they want to truly compete they will have to take measures that are going to be extremely unwelcome within the company. Laying off 10,000 people Worldwide is just trying to take the least painful measures and hoping it's enough.
To fix Sony is something I would never wish on anyone. But here is the way to do it but it will require an effort and resolve that few people would have. First move all hardware manufacturing to mainland China and just keep research and development in Japan (this will be incredibly hard for them to do). Have the hardware side completely independent so that the music and motion picture sides have absolutely no influence on it.
As for the hardware they need to stop chasing the bleeding edge of technology because they can't win at this point against Samsung which has significantly more resources. Instead they need to devote far more of their efforts to innovating already established technologies. In that regard they need to take a good hard look at Apple and Nintendo and instead of simply bringing out copies of their products they need to change their company so that it works in much the same way as theirs.
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I can certainly stand behind your reasoning here. Sony are basically the business equivalent of a multi-purpose machine; lots of different qualities and possibilities but some or most of the functions can and will end up being somewhat half-assed. Like a modern phone, it does everything but rather poorly.
