When news hit this week about Sony's huge losses and massive layoffs, it showed how far the once-popular brand has fallen -- but it's easy to forget that Sony was once the gold standard consumer electronics brand.
Perhaps Apple should pay attention.
First, a look at the ugly numbers: Sony announced this week a stunning year-end loss of $6.4 billion (its fiscal year ended March 31). As CNet reported, Sony originally was predicting a $2.7 billion loss, then dropped the bombshell with the actual number, which was almost 2.5 times larger than the original estimate.
Before flat screens came along, people bought Sony TVs. Heck, I had two of them in my house. Today, I have a Samsung and an LG, both South Korean brands that have been eating Sony's lunch for years.
But it wasn't just TVs. There was a total failure on the part of Sony (except perhaps with the PlayStation) to take advantage of the market changes over the last decade, whether those changes were in mobile phones, MP3 players, laptops, or tablets. Apple swooped in during this time, creating products people wanted. And while Apple soared, Sony plunged.
Remember the Sony Walkman? Long before the Apple iPod, the Walkman was the original portable music player and it was an unprecedented star at the time. Yet for some reason, Sony was never able to translate that original popularity to MP3 players.
Sony teamed up with Ericsson in the mobile phone market, but that never went anywhere.
Before the MacBook, Sony Vaios were a popular choice for laptop buyers. I still have an old one on the floor of my office I bought in the early 2000s. Once the MacBook came along, though, Vaios faded along with other Sony products.
New brands filled the void left by Sony's inability to maintain its brand dominance.
Today, Apple sits at the top of the consumer electronics brand heap, along with the previously mentioned South Korean offerings. Maybe these brands should take heed, especially Apple.
That's because it's easy for large corporations to grow complacent, to look at their lofty cash balances and their dominant market share, and think that the brand name alone will keep them on top.
As Sony has learned, that is simply not the case. Apple and Samsung and other top consumer electronics brands of today have to stay focused on making good products, or perhaps some Chinese or Indian brand will supplant them. Or maybe some company we consider an also-ran today (much as Apple was considered in the late 90s) will suddenly reinvent itself and go lunging for the throats of these popular brands.
Sony's decline should be an object lesson for all brands: Change with the market, or you could be facing a similar precipitous drop. It happened to Sony. It can happen to any brand.
Interesting follow up to my post. In a blog post today, a Forrester Executive predicted that Apple will be the next Sony. His hypothesis is that without its charasmatic leader, Steve Jobs, Apple will soon fade because there is nobody else internally to replace him.
After reading, Jobs' biography, I see his point, but I think there are still people who share his vision if not his obsession to detail and that will be the true test of Apple moving forward. So far, momentum continues to carry them forward. A big test will be the release of the next iPhone though and perhaps a product that Jobs didn't have his hand in.
Of course, Sony could come back. It has massive resources and its corporate fingers in many different pots. There is no reason it can't make a turn-around at some point.
There were many reasons for its decline including bad products, bad decisions, poor management and reports of corporate in-fighting.
Sony didn't ignore trends, it just seemed to wave at them in terms of its efforts. One thing Sony does have in its favor is the Playstation gaming system. Much like XBox 360 is driving growth at Microsoft, Playstation could be Sony's salvation.
My 16 year old was in Best Buy the other day and expressed curiosity about Sony's Playstation mobile phone. But remember Sony is much more than consumer electronics. It's a diversified corporation.
I agree with you. Delivering quality products to customers is their USP. And if they stopped making quality products the sales will automatically go down.
It's kind of a chicken or egg theory, but point taken. I will say that if it was all hype and marketing, that would only carry Apple so far if the products didn't deliver. The fact is they do deliver and that keeps customers loyal. As I said, if it stopped making quality products, that momentum would only carry them so far before people realized they were paying a premium for mediocre products. So far, that hasn't happened.
I would agree with you but I think innovation and proper marketing have an important role in it too. Apple has been able to create a need in the mind of the consumers for its products. Lets take the new ipad, the hype that was created about the phenominal display etc lead the consumers into buying the new ipad even if they had previous versions with them.
If a firm is able to innovate while at the same time able to create a strong perception in the minds of its consumers I believe it will continue to do good business.
I'm afraid Sony lost the battle because it couldn't stimulate the consumers as well as it would have liked to.
You're being a little too kind to Sony, while giving Apple short shrift.
It wasn't the VHS decision that killed Sony, not by a long shot. That didn't even really seem to hurt them in the 80s and 90s when the company was *the* hot consumer electronics brand.
Sony has been a dysfunctional company for years that made bad bets on bad products.
As for why Apple is successful, it's not just riding the momentum of being a strong brand, it's a strong brand because it makes good products that people want.
As long as it continues to do that, it will remain strong. If it stops making good products, that momemtum will only propel them so long before they face a similar fate to Sony.
I don't think Sony is run by a bunch of dummies, or lack know how to make impressive products. Keeping up with the market is not always as easy as it may sound, luck and being in the right place at the right time may be a more definitive way to keep ahead of the pack.
Apple came up with a hot selling bunch of new products that consumers latched on to much like they took to the Walkmans and other gee-wizz stuff of the 70s with Sony.
But consumers went with VHS instead of technically better Betamax videos back then too. How to predict what consumers will buy? It's not that easy.
And once you become the darling of the consumer the effects will last a few years, then probably the tide turns and another company reaps the benefits of it's latest and greatest gadget.
I do agree that devices will get simpler, cheaper, and more specialized -- or not specialized. Kind of like a car that doesn't require a lot of options, but for which varous options can be added at a price.
I like your thinking. It's about content, not packaging, and - with the exception of committed Apple-heads - we are all becoming more and more device agnostic.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
These days, even some usually techno-friendly people have their hackles up about the potential of Google Glass to surreptitiously record video or take pictures. I've heard more than one tech savvy friend bring up "the creep factor," the ability of a weird guy to secretly record you.
Last year as you may recall, the Internet community rallied and prevented the passage of SOPA/PIPA legislation. CISPA, another piece of legislation that targeted Internet freedom, also died. However, one proposed law that failed in 2012 has been revived this year. And it appears forces are not now lining up against CISPA with the same enthusiasm as last time.
You might be surprised to learn that the FBI has generated hundreds of thousands of secret information requests since 2000, many of which go to Internet companies seeking information about individual users. You may be even more surprised to discover that in all those years, only one Internet company has challenged these secret requests.
Late Friday I learned I had been chosen to participate in the Google Glass Explorer's program, a group selected to take the first-generation of Google Glass out in the world and report back on how they're using the devices.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
The drive to stream TV directly to HD sets, to tablets, or to PCs in the home may create a broader demand for streaming, and this could create a major new source of traffic pressure on mobile networks, mobile pricing, and mobile service policies.
Today's infants quickly move from the womb to a touchscreen. A survey by Common Sense Media found that half of children under eight years old access a mobile device like a smartphone, a video iPod, or a tablet; and experts are mulling the ramifications of this.
Mobile TV is everywhere, and yet, nowhere. Nobody uses it – because the handsets aren't good, the pricing is too high, and the coverage is not good enough. But Qualcomm's FloTV Personal TV aims to change all of that.
Apple may want to do a TV offering, but to meet its goal it would have to address three specific issues that have been exposed by earlier attempts to make Internet TV work.
The iPad Mini is the latest iteration of the exploding tablet category. Because most tablets are WiFi-only, they create a new kind of mobile network. The problem is that we don't have issues like roaming and security defined for this new world.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
Email This
