That is not what I said at all.  Sony doesn't make cheap alternatives, they generally have a hand in the premium based market.  They just do not have a individual, unique product that stands out against the same competing products.

Example that is most obvious:

Sony makes MP3 players

Microsoft makes MP3 players

Creative Makes MP3 players

Apple makes MP3 players

Now of those 4 listed, which manufacturer has a stand-out product that commands a majority of the market share? 

If you apply that to Sony's products they don't perform in the market as well.  A good portion of this failure could be attributed to Sony's piss poor marketing department.  The majority of market leaders have phenominal marketing for their unique products, like Apple's Ipod and Nintendo's Wii.  What does Sony have?  PS3 marketing is bad, Blu-Ray marketing is often after the fact marketing for other products and their TV line is promoted by Peyton Manning who annoy's the piss out of 99% of American men who envy him.

I think the term used to describe this is cash cow.

100% correct good sir.  Heck, Nintendo has 2!

Huh? did you read my post wrong. That is what I said.

Sony has no Unique product that isn't easily substituted with another. And the substitutes are all cheaper. (It is usually assumed cheaper means less quality) Their only product that really can be unique (the PS3 due to exclusive games) is not doing too good right now.

The rest like TV's, MP3 Players, or what else you say are either not the cool thing (Ipod) or are too expensive for people in this recession.

Looking at the wider picture now...

While a lot of the things going bad for Sony are out of its control (exchange rates, recession), Sony hasn't been a robust or well managed company for years.

Besides the already mentioned lack of cash cows, they have been accepting low profit margins, high debt and a low cash reserve (for their size), for the sake of expansion and risky investments (PS3, Blu-Ray). They almost only have premium products, and they keep a financial division around which invests in the stock market, having just the same weaknesses as their other divisions. Where was their margin of safety?

Granted, a lot of other companies are suffering too, but many do have a bigger safety margin. Sony will be forced to restructure a lot in a short-term period, and I sincerely can't imagine what they'll do to turn the company around. All I know is it will have to be big.

While I'm not an expert on Sony's history, there are many similarities between Sony's rise and unseating of many of the most important electronics manufacturers of the time and the companies that are currently rising and unseating Sony ...

Lots of companies have faced similar problems in the past, and if Sony can redefine their position in the market like Apple, Nintendo and IBM have they may become far more successful than they ever were.

A lot of companies have been no different in the good times imo.

We are seen a lot of evidence of this in Ireland recently where our own economy is  going belly up.

"Bash Sony"...some people are so stupid...THIS IS REALITY, NOT FANBOY LOGIC...sony is bleeding money, but when you point out reality, you're bashing sony...lol...talk about denial.

I'd expect this division alone to run Sony into negative numbers, I was actually thinking of even bigger losses than $1b due to all of Sony's "non-productive" departments. Games and Movies should be ok, all the rest is probably problematic in these times..

I don't think the financial division will have that big an impact. Look at Sony's previous forecast revision:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/08revision/slide/07_slide.html

The stock market's decline only accounts for 22% of the revision.

I'd say Games could perhaps be profitable in the medium term with better exchange rates, the only problem is the Catch 22 between not cutting prices and not selling many PS3s, which will make it harder to counter the decline in PS2/PSP software sales. The Electronics division will probably be doing even worse due to low demand of course.