“Japan’s consumer electronics industry is dying, Sony’s former chief says,” Rory Cellan-Jones reports for BBC News.
“In a frank interview at the European Technology Round Table in Barcelona, Nobuyuki Idei explained what had gone wrong during his 10-year tenure at the helm of Sony,” Cellan-Jones reports. “Mr Idei ran Sony from 1995 to 2005 – a period when the Japanese giant’s fortunes suffered, with its finances faltering and rival products such Microsoft’s Xbox and Apple’s iPod eating into its reputation for world-beating innovation.”
Cellan-Jones reports, “Asked to explain why Sony had been caught out by the iPod’s success, he said that Apple chief Steve Jobs liked Sony and had studied its record carefully. ‘He’d have probably liked to be Sony’s CEO,’ he said.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Leveldown” for the heads up.]
In the past, Steve Jobs has made no secret of his admiration of the “old” Sony, when Sony was a good company. The mess that spreads rootkits, millions of bad fire-prone laptop batteries, perpetually-failing “iPod+iTunes killers,” copies Apple’s design aesthetics, can’t seem to ship the vastly-overpriced PS3, and continues to overcharge for it’s TVs in the face of superior offerings from the likes of Samsung is probably the last place Jobs would ever want to be. He already cleaned up one mess in the last decade, he probably would like to enjoy the fruits of his labor instead of trying to clean up the even bigger mess that is Sony. We’re no longer boycotting Sony, partly out of pity and party because they no longer sell anything worth buying. Sony wishes they could have Steve Jobs in charge.
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