One of Sony's biggest mistakes was what they did in their Television and Walkman divisions.

For the television side of things while Hitachi and Sharp were working on flat panel TVs, Sony continued to invest in their Trinitron line. They didn't believe that flat panels would take off as soon as they did. When they started becoming popular Sony had to team up with a Korean company (I can't remember if it was LG or Samsung) to have them produce their LCDs and Plasmas for them. This has cost them lots of R&D time to have the best product on the market to fit their pricing strategy.

Similarly with their music division they did not rush to have the best MP3 player on the market, but instead focused on their Discman (which could play mp3s of a cd), MDs, and the S-CD while Apple started to make the IPod a household name. By the time that Sony did start bringing their mp3 players to market they did not try to differentiate themselves from the competition to prove that they were the big boy on the block.

This lead them to where the did go partially right, with the Blu-ray and PS3.

The Blu-ray was a good innovation by Sony and they were smart to pack it into the PS3 to help promote the technology, but they could have made it more successful out of the gate if they had used M$ HDi software preventing the HD war and thus the format would be more popular today. This would have probably also led to an external Blu-Ray drive for the 360 instead of a HD-DVD drive. (this would have made Sony a lot more money since each Blu-Ray disc bought brings in a little cash for them)

To me the PS3 is where Sony was trying to make up for their mistakes with their TVs and digital music players. They heavily innovated for this product. They decided to make a product that many believe to be superior to the competition, with everything packed in. Unfortunately for them was the resulting price to produce the gaming product. Gamers are not known to be rich, but since the PS brand is a very strong one worldwide they took the chance in releasing a very expensive console, even more so than M$'s expensive 360(at the time). There are many different things that have plagued this great product, lack of 3rd party support in the initial stages, the need to remove backcompat, remove 2 USBs, etc. Now the PS3 is becoming popular, but each one sold is still loosing money for Sony and even though they price has fallen it is still the most expensive one on the market which has hurt it's casual appeal that the PS2 had.

What can Sony do to fix itself?... I'm not sure, but as I posted earlier I hope they do.

Unfortunately when you are a hardware maker as big as SONY, you run a greater financial risk when times get tough.  SONY still makes some of the best consumer electronics on the market, but these items are far from being essentials while profit margins are very small.  I cannot vouch for there financial practices, but what they should have done to prepare for a recession such as this is apparently too late.  One thing I tend to think about when companies such as SONY are in financial trouble is that how much us upper management being paid?  I tend to think this was one of Apple's problems before Gilbert Amelio took over.  I also remembered when Apple had to slash jobs, and their stock continously tumbled from 1995.

I've always felt that what made SONY stand out and what allowed them to be as successful as they are is because they did their own R&D, resulting in a lot of quality hardware.  Unfortunately, the market is becoming more saturated with a/v products.  A/V technology is become more and more common place where it's harder to stand out.  And even when you are targeting to a mid to higher range consumer group, just their business is not enough to keep you finacially affoat.  I do think that SONY needs to continue their push for R&D (like their OLED line) but they need to find some way of streamlining their manufacturing cost.

I still don't understand one thing

Sony ericsson walkman phones are so popular here at my school

why are people saying that division is bad?

Because over time their profit margins have shrunk and there seems to be nothing in the product pipeline that will change it. The iPhone makes a lot of profit per phone sold and has growing marketshare. Sony phones make almost no profit and has stagnant growth.

@darthdevidem01 -

The problem is that they are not very popular in Japan or in the US. Since the UK is only a small portion of Sony's market. The Sony Ericsson was starting to gain popularity in the US about 5 years ago and then trickled off. Now I don't know anyone who has one anymore. It seems to be Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, or iPhones everywhere.

@Jordahn, I think investment into OLED technology is the type of thing that put them here now. Unless there have been leaps and bounds in the technology, OLED will only be adopted by technophiles. OLED suffer from a short life and drastic cost increase when compared to traditional LCD and Plasma technologies.

@darth, I think when Sony invested in the Ericsson name they took on a large amount of debt that the company carried before hand (someone correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not well versed on this).

@Wiibox, do you actually think the PS3 and Bluray was a good investment for Sony, my current opinion on consumer electronics industry is its usually detrimental to focus on high end products, ala PS3/Bravia/Ericsson/Bluray. Where companies that produce products that produce non-luxury products tend to do better when their customers are targeted by competitors.

SONY did team up with Samsung for LCD panel production, but later teamed up with Sharp in early 2008 to make LCD TV's.  SONY still employs its BRAVIA technology in their LCD TV's.  But SONY was making Trinitrons, CRT rear projections, LCD's, and LCD rear projections when Sharp was making LCD TV's.

Even Ken Katuragi chastized SONY for not taking advantage of the mp3 market when they should have before he was forced out of SONY.

I have to disagree with you in regards to HDi since it was Microsoft who never showed any favors towards Blu-ray but was trying to slow/hurt the HD optical format adoption by pushing a format war in support of HD-DVD.  This was not the fault of SONY and/or the Blu-ray Disc Association, but more of Microsoft's "marketing" in favor of digital distribution by helping feuling confusion in the fornat war.

According to that relatively old article (april 2008), "London-based Sony Ericsson is also losing ground. Its shipment growth has nosedived from 64 percent to 2 percent due in large part to brand fatigue, according to the report."

Also, the fact that it's based in London could explain why it's more popular in UK.

Excellent article detailing the possibility of Sony going bankrupt.
Very informative and well researched.
This will silence a lot of rumors.

http://www.financeasia.com/article.aspx?CIaNID=92704

*stands up in rage*

YEAH THEY NEED TO KICK OUT ALL THOSE LAZY EJECUTIVE

*sit down*

This is so sad, and they killed their only cash cow for been greedy, if they didnt force blue ray and the ps3 had launched at 300 instead of 599, they would be in the lead or at least close to nintendo, but noooooooooo, they have to put the strategic price, and look at them now. >.<