They should be buying Samsung in 5 years and Apple in 10

Sony was basically selling liabilities to turn them into what they believe to be more useful assets or to trim up the company as a whole. Sony has mountains of those acquired from their golden age. They have billions of cash in bank and actually in the top 20 of world's companies with the most cash reserves. MS is way up there too. Samsung on the other hand are moslty able to make such huge profits and fund their R&D and marketing from the wong, possibly the world's most undervalued currency, a scenario that obviously won't last forever.

Anyways I'm not even sure why I am replying to a post that on more civilized circles would outright be called blatant trolling. Oh well.

Heh, well, I guess if you're reaching for the stars, you might as well reach straight through reality and start grasping at the completely intangible...

im a big sony fanboy but hahahahaha

"But with the market already being flooded with low-cost Android-powered phones, how cheap Sony – a company whose products are notorious for being on the pricey side – is prepared to go to stay afloat in such a competitive market is anyone’s guess."

Sony smartphones ARE Android aren't they?

Yes, but that's not what they were trying to say. The latest Sony phones are premium just as much as the better Samsung smartphones. While there are low cost Android phones available competing in the market, older Android powered Sony phones are just as affordable. The author is just falsly associating the quality and price of Sony products in other markets to this one. Which isn't the authors worse mistake since he mistanslated or twisted the words of the article he cites to make it sound like Sony said they would buy Samsung or Apple in the future, even though it was a joke more about Samsung setting its sights on buying Apple and how Sony isn't so crazily ambitious. (At least that's how I read the direct translation) So yeah the author essetially reported that Sony said the opposite of what they did so I wouldn't really listen to anything they have to say.

15 lines worth of text in the op that all point to SONY setting reasonable goals and being completely sane. Everyone focuses on the one line that does the contrary.

Hell yeah! You're probably the first person to recognize the characters in my avatar. :D

^^^Holding the Eagles upside-down. Hardcore.

"Dow Jones Newswires briefly reports on an article from the Korea Economic Daily claiming that Apple is set to sign contracts that would see Samsung providing $7.8 billion in parts for Apple's mobile devices this year, making Apple Samsung's largest customer." Simple math tells us that more than a third of Samsung's profits come from Apple. Apple is a much more profitable company than Samsung. Samsung is bigger by revenue and assets but Apple is far bigger in profits. What Samsung makes on TVs, Computers, Galaxy phones/tablets, and refrigerators (lol) is peanuts compared to what Apple makes. Apple made double what Samsung made in profits for 2012.

Many of those 80 different companies operate under the Samsung name as separate entities and are simply affiliates or alliances with other companies. The majority owned which are the subsidiaries, where most of the revenue and profits come from are Samsung Electronics, Samsung Life Insurance, Samsung Heavy Industries, etc.

You just can't possibly predict the future in this business. In the 90s Apple was at the edge of bankruptcy, they were in worse shape than Sony is today. And now look at them, they are only topped by some oil companies but they have a ashitload of money in the bank no doubt and could buy out almost every company on the planet, if they really wanted to. Won't happen, because the law has something to say too. It's called Kartellamt here in germany, I'm pretty sure there's some kind of counterpart in the US.

Anyway, it would need an absolute epic turnaround, but it isn't impossible. Just think about what happens if a new iphone bombs. That would hurt Apple really really bad and would lower their worth over night significantly. Samsung on the other hand has the same advantage as Sony themselves. They are in hundreds of markets, so if something doesn't do that well, they still can rely on their other businesses. It still isn't entirely impossible for them to be taken over some time in the future.

It may seem unlikely at the moment, but you never know what the future brings. Just never say never. Besides that, kudos to Sony, you should always aim for high targets. Even if you don't reach them, if you set the bar too low, you will never be on top.