Tagging for when i get off work.

I just wanted to point out, for those who don't know the economic definitions of recession, that a recession recovery begins when things are at their absolutely worst point (output is lowest, unemployement is highest).  So even if there is a recovery that begins in spring of 2009, 2009 will likely be a worse year than 2008 as there would be more unemployment and less output at the beginning of the recovery than at any other point during the recession, and even consumers who get their jobs back will be more cautous overall, perhaps by necessity, than consumers who never lost their jobs.

So a "global recovery" beginning won't save Sony in 2009.  It will probably help them in 2010, but depending on what they sacrifice in 2009 to survive and how their competitors react, Sony will be in a very tough spot even in a significantly recovering economy.

Saying, "Sony will be saved by Keiretsu" is ignorant since Keiretsu has nothing to do with Sony.

Saying, "Sony will be saved by the global recession recovery beginning in 2009" is nonsense.

There are enough ways for companies to survive during hard times, especially companies the size of Sony, so that Sony will certainly recover.  However, the article (and analysts) seem to be pointing out that Sony will require some major restructuring or reorganization to do so.  Don't be unrealistic about this: Sony is in a very difficult spot right now and they will almost certainly lose market share and mind share in every major area.

I also doubt a spring recovery is even feasible at this point, things are going to get worst before they start getting better. All signs indicate 09 being worst than 08.

 they don't i am pretty sure they do. Toshiba ownes HD DVD Sony owns Blu ray

Sony is one of the owners, but there are many others. Sony does not get all the profits for licensing the technology.

"The "Blu-ray Disc Founder group" was started in May 2002 by nine leading electronic companies: Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

Blu-ray is owned by the Blu-ray Disc Association.

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

Exactly -- spring could mark the beginning of an economic recovery, but a Sony recovery would follow much, much later as the beginning of an economic recovery would literally be the worst time for Sony.

I think Arius is saying that the economies will still be worsening in Spring... Unemployment is not that high yet for example. Frankly I would be very positively surprised if the economies bottomed out this year.

Right.  When the "recession recovery" begins, the economy is literally at its worst point (highest unemployment, lowest output).  So even if recession recovery begins in 2009, 2009 will still almost certainly be a worse year for Sony than 2008.  The world recession beginnning a recovery will not be help to Sony, it will the the promise of help at some point further in the future.  But not in the same year that the recovery begins.

But many economists consider 2009 the year when the recovery will begin -- ie: the year when the world economy hits bottom.  In a very naive view, I would guess that if the world economy bottoms out in mid 2009, then 2010 would be approximately equivalent to 2008, or slightly worse (recovery will probably be slower than the beginning of the recession).

Wikipedia's information is a bit out of date. The keiretsu used to be relatively autarkic groups, where a cluster of industrial firms had one main bank, one main insurance firm, and one main trading house. During the crisis of the 1990s, though, this model began to break down - banks couldn't bail out firms from the bad debts of the post-Bubble crash. Lots of neoliberal observers, who celebrate Wall Street-style greed and condemn any other form of capitalism as Satanic, doomed or just plain un-American, claimed Japan was toast and Japan Inc. would become just like the US.

Wrong. The Japanese government bailed out its banks, and the keiretsu banks merged into super-banks. One of the great ironies of the neoliberal era is that the keiretsu model was extended to the entire Japanese stock market.

Don't believe me? Crack open any issue of the Japan Company Handbook and look at the shareholdings of the major firms. You'll see widely dispersed networks of shareholdings, concentrated around a few major holders -- MTFG, Mizuho and Sumitomo-Mitsui, plus various government trust funds.

Sony wasn't a traditional keiretsu member, but today that doesn't matter. Any major Japanese company which gets into trouble will get a helping hand from these networks. They're durable, efficient, and are the model for many other booming East Asian economies (especially China).