At this point IMVHO, it could be even more sensible that Sony be taken over by a joint-venture of companies in its keiretsu, Mitsui, and the allied keiretsu Sumitomo, that should cut the branches without hope of profitability, keep the profitable ones like games, movies, music and finance and use Sony just as premium brand for TVs, co-owned and run in synergy and with economies of scale by the display producers in the two keiretsus. Same for phones. In those two markets Sony just isn't able to produce the whole range, from low to high end, and remain profitable, but this means not being able to realise economies of scale if not with other companies catering for the segments Sony isn't suitable to.
PS I agree that it would be very painful, both for the dead and resized branches, but the sooner they do it, the less the pain for the same result (or the more the result for the same pain), and the Japanese work and welfare system together with the skills of the workers of the branches to be cut or trimmed, leaving them more future opportunities than to less qualified ones, will make it less painful than what it would be in many other countries.

What did MS lose?! They didn't throw this money into a river, they bought Mojang and you can be sure that there is already income from Minecraft flowing to MS. Of course this won't compensate 2,5 billion dollares at all but still they didn't lose anything.

Even funnier I think MS would be happy if Sony's android sales increase as they get a lot of money through android smartphones:

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-is-making-2bn-a-year-on-android-licensing-five-times-more-than-windows-phone-7000022936/

2bn... That's quite the money Sony is going to be losing...

I prefer Nintendo but I don't want Sony destroyed. I may not like how they operate these days, but I'd rather they changed than go under.

Lots of people. No complex, just the truth. I don't even prefer Sony.

It starts with you. The others know who they are too and don't need to be named.

" The company blamed the drastic downturn on poor smartphone sales and said that it will take a $1.76 billion impairment charge against the phones division in the second quarter. "

Can anyone please simplify this so I can understand it ? What exactly is  the "impairment charge".

Anyway back on topic: it's pretty worrying that its in the smartphone division.. Kaz called it a "Core" area..
Dropping the C, E, M, T and whatever alphabet letter they have for their phones and only keeping the Z series won't make it rise above an Apple and Samsung.. I don't even think their flagship phones will thriumph against the cheaper Chinese flagship phones from Miui, Oppo, Oneplus.. If those other chinese manufactors can get a good distribution system like Huawei its gonna be difficult to recover and grow in that area.

Most of it is being written off. 

Yikes! Its time for Hirai to go.

What do you mean by this? Where did you get the info from?