I took your comment about "16 year old gamer"s as belittling and condiscending. You were generalizing all vgc posters as this stereotype. Perhaps I over analyzed what you were saying, and maybe if English is your second language, you did not mean to imply that.

@radha: It's pretty rare that publicly traded companies go bankrupt. Usually they get split to pieces and sold. Of course, a lot of the staff get sacked and the money got from selling the different pieces will be used to pay the debt.

@Godot: I don't think the company being based in London have anything to do with popularity, since neither, Sony or Ericsson, are recognised as british brands.

@Jordahn: There's really no reason for Sony to push the envelope, since you clearly can see that it's not very profitable in the end.
Sony has history in adopting new tech quickly and make profit out of it, so that may be be the reason why they want to push tech forward. But, their strategy worked when R&D cost weren't relatively as high as they are today and when Sony was the "only" cheapo manufacturer.

@Fishy Joe: You could say that M$ already started a price war which Sony can't call, or to put it as Kazuo Hirai would; they hit Sonys weak point to cause massive damage.

Almost sounds as if insider trading were legalized, it would alleviate a large portion of the problem. Only the true rumors would result in large stock trades, and since its true... not a whole lot of harm done, since the first initial trades would be a clear indicator in itself?

In any case, this speculative article is just that.  Its speculative magnitude makes me doubtful of its value.

Insider trading is using non-public information in a public exchange to profit at the expense of people who don't have the same access to that information.

A media outlet reporting on the fiscal state of a company is... journalism.  If journalism relied on the happy cooperation of all subjects--releasing internal numbers & what-not--there'd be very little written.  Many sources speak off-the-record or on conditions of anonymity.

If an organization like Forbes intentionally misrepresented things about a company like Sony with the intent to harm them (through causing their stock prices to fall, etc.), I believe that would be a crime, too.  But using whatever information they have in an honest attempt to relay what's going on to their readers?  That's their job.  (And, incidentally, if they're wrong about a major story, it's a hit to their most valuable asset--their credibility--so major publications tend not to simply report "rumor" w/o evidence.)

Incidentally (though I don't see how it relates, one way or the other), if you have the "technique" down, you absolutely can "win" in Vegas.  Certain ways of card-counting can change the odds to above 50% in the player's favor in certain games, like blackjack.  Which is exactly why, when a casino believes they know someone to be counting cards, they ask him to leave.

@Groucho - Though this would give an unfair advantage to people with inside info on the company. The thousands of other shareholders would be late to the sale.

bdbdbd then maybe no one should push the envelope so we'll have no progression in technology. Now, I'm not implying that SONY is the only one and every investment is profitable. Of course they don't have to. But like you said, it's worked in the past so I don't blame them for trying again. Who knew this recession will effect so much.

Would it be?  If the insiders knew to trade, and the "outsiders" knew the insiders could do this...  would they be so gungho to sell at a moment's notice, or buy on a whim?  For the price of stock to change, there has to be a seller AND a buyer.

Off topic.  So I won't post anymore on it.

@darthdeviem: Actually Sony and Ericsson both had their phone business in the mud. In reality the joint venture has been doing good in relation to how things were before it started.

@Groucho: Well, Wall Street is a game where the rules are bent. Not publicly, but behind the curtains.
And, you can't win in Vegas, if you have the right technique, they ban you from the casino.

I never said pushing the envelope was bad, but extensive RND investment isn't always to make something better, but in most cases to make it cheaper/easier to produce/etc. I think most companies should focus on pushing the technological barrier, but for companies like Sony that tend to focus on luxury type electronics are setting themselves up for failure.

From many of the companies that have presented OLED technology to me, they suffered from lifespans of roughly 1/10 of LED technologies. This decrease in lifespan is unacceptable in consumer electronics, and last time I heard was only 1 year ago.

@Jordahn: I didn't mean it how you understood it. Basically Sony has done the same thing in the past as todays cheapo manufacturers do; they adopt the tech when it's cheaper.
Now, since Sony has had advantage from the new tech, they want to keep the advantage, so they spend huge amounts of money in R&D (which is the one that's been "killing" them in recent years) to be the "first one out". Although, on TV:s, sticking to CRT did hurt Sony badly, since it had to ramp the flat screen TV manufacturing up with high costs.
Now, they shouldn't quit developing new tech, but what they should do, is to keep their R&D costs lower, see what their competitors come up with and either improve from that or sell the products cheaper.
Sonys recent way of thinking has made them a tech orientated company from a customer orientated company that it once was.

Sonys current problems don't base themselves to the downturn, but to their recent years, when the situation was bad to begin with, when the downturn started.