“Ailing Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp warned it was heading for a bigger-than-expected $2.9 billion annual loss, presenting a daunting task for incoming CEO Kazoo Hiram, who vowed to move quickly to turn things around,” Nathan Layne and Yoko Kubota report for Reuters.
“Overtaken by more innovative rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics over the past decade, Sony posted a $2.1 billion net loss for October-December, normally a strong quarter boosted by year-end holiday sales, as it battled a strong yen, flooding in Thailand that ruptured supply chains, and a weak economy,” Layne and Kubota report.
MacDailyNews Take: Samsung is the opposite of innovative and Layne and Kubota only make themselves look ignorant trying to lump the excurciatingly derivative Samsung into the same league as Apple – the very company Samsung so slavishly copies, no less.
Layne and Kubota report, “The forecast for a 220 billion yen ($2.9 billion) net loss for the year to March, Sony’s fourth straight year of red ink, was close to double what the market expected, and revealed the task ahead for Hiram, who replaces Howard Stringer as CEO in April. Hiram, a 51-year old Sony veteran known for reviving the PlayStation gaming operations through aggressive cost-cutting, said he would not hesitate to scale back or withdraw from businesses if they were not competitive.”
Layne and Kubota report, “‘It won’t be easy for Sony to regain its lost ground under new leadership, as its overall competitiveness has sharply weakened,’ said Kim Young-Chan, analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp in Seoul. ‘It’s got structural problems that will take years to fix.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Hiram does turn Sony around, he’ll be known forever as The Great Kazoo.
Apple Inc. an innovative American company. Ponder if a Japan company was @ the top. I DREAD the thought. STEVE JOBS! 🙂
Unfortunately it’s a different time than when Akio Morita was running Sony and had virtually no competition. The corporate culture didn’t really change as the rest of the technology world did. Unless they jettison every last bit of the old regime and come to grips with new realities and the Apple way of thinking, they are doomed. Ironic since Steve Jobs wanted to be the new Sony, he succeeded as Sony slowly fades into the sunset, completely outclassed.
I know that Shakespeare’s “what’s in a name” quote is one of life’s great truisms . . . but KAZOO HIRAM? Would you REALLY hire someone to head your company named KAZOO? R-E-A-L-L-Y?
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Now now! He may be a marketing dweeb CEO who will tank Sony, but let’s state his name correctly:
In Japanese his name is pronounced “Cat-Zoo-Oh”.
Now that we know how it’s said, we are welcome to make fun of cat zoos, cat ladies and the disappointing smells with which we are confronted when we visit either. 😉
BTW: The source article authors are profoundly ignorant. Any dolt can verify the correct English spelling of the name of the man who is will tank Sony. Here is his Wikipedia page:
Kazuo Hirai
new CEO expects pain
Former customer expects the new Marketing-As-Managment CEO to be a ‘pain’.
Been nice knowing you Sony. Sorry you went all senile and stuff. 😯
The new CEO expects pain… Yet another CEO confesses the obvious of that, which even a blind person can see…
The “iPain™” strikes again!
Overtaken by more innovative rivals such as Apple Inc
A target toward which the new Sony must aim.
and Samsung Electronics…
Seriously? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
(he said samesung was ‘innovative’. heeheehee!)
What can Sony do to make a comeback, I know! Smartphone! They can enter the smartphone market! They can call their phone, ‘The Kazoo!’ 🙂
The serious way for Sony to make a comeback is to toss all the Marketing-As-Management execs back down the stairs and put an actual ENTREPRENEUR back in charge of the company.
Yes, that’s exactly how Apple made its comeback. Thank you Steve Jobs.
I agree with that sentiment. Sony is more innovative than Samsung and has better products in my opinion. They have a lot of really interesting products, but they seem not to be able to get out of their own way. They seem to lack a cohesive product strategy that would help them to market their products effectively.
Sony sold its soul to Microsoft and then Google. That very act condemned it to mediocrity. It lost its innovative spirit. It lost its mojo and marbles. Look at all the eunuchs that were in the Windows’ and Androids’ harems: HP, Dell and Motorola. These were all great companies but had since diminished in stature. Only Apple is the singular company that has not sold its soul to anyone.
“more innovative rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung ..”
You have to admit that samsung is innovative, in the new way they find to clone products and get away with it… in the way the have to fool its customers and make them actually believe they got a good or competitive product.. in a way to stab apple in the back when they are their biggest customer.. yes, samsung is innovative… in a very bad way.
This type of announcement is completely expected when a new CEO takes over. This new CEO wants the perception to be a “big mess” that he is going to fix over time. Steve Jobs did the same thing when he took over as “iCEO.” I think this is a hopeful sign for Sony.
In contrast, the hopelessness of RIM is clear because its new CEO did the opposite. He basically said everything is fine and we are going to “stay the course.” That means he is trying to paint as positive a picture of the current situation as possible, because his true purpose is probably to find a buyer for RIM.
While I agree that Samsung slavishly copied Apple’s iPhone and iPad in the mobile devices arena, I do think that Samsung out-innovated Sony and other Japanese consumer electronics giants in TV’s, display panels, semiconductors, etc. Samsung is now way bigger than any Japanese electronics company by revenue and is raking in a lot of money while the likes of Sony are losing billions.
Gotta give credit where credit is due. Samsung has effectively vanquished the Japanese giants and is now primarily competing with Apple in the consumer electronics field. I’m pretty sure Samsung didn’t anticipate Apple becoming as big as it has over the past 5 years. Samsung was totally fixated on catching up with Nokia and Motorola over the past decade in the handset market. On the hardware side, Apple and Samsung are the only two significant players and the rest are fighting over the scraps.
But, again, Samsung has no software assets or expertise to speak of and that’s their Achilles’ Heel. It relies on Google and/or Microsoft for OS platforms and has no ecosystem that it can call its own. Bada or some new open-source initiative isn’t the answer and they know it. Ditto for Sony or any other Asian manufacturer. They have no control over their own destiny because they can’t do software and there’s virtually nothing they can do about it but be dragged along by Google and Microsoft.
No one can do what Apple does. It’s funny how the whole hardware-software-platform-ecosystem integration that Apple has is overlooked or dismissed by the naysayers and haters. They all like to denigrate what they can’t do or don’t have but the truth is they couldn’t do what Apple can even if they tried. Ultimately, software is the key as it’s the “brain” but a brain needs a “body” too to function properly. The problem with Google and Microsoft is that they have no clue on how to build good bodies. Apple’s position is actually much stronger than it looks.
Anybody up for starting an Apple is going to buy Sony rumor?
Anybody owned a Mac long enough to get the joke?
Funny, Samsung used to copy Sony, now they’re copying Apple.
They also used to copy RIM. Remember the Samsung “Blackjack”, their shameless Blackberry ripoff?
Samesung is just another serial copyist – move along, no innovation to see there.