“Today, Sony Corp. is struggling to reinvent itself and win back its reputation as a pioneer of razzle-dazzle gadgetry once exemplified in the Walkman,” Kageyama reports. “The Japanese electronics and entertainment company lost 98.9 billion yen ($1.02 billion) in the fiscal year ended March — its first annual loss in 14 years — and is expecting more red ink this year.”
Sony “hasn’t had a decisive hit like the Walkman for years, and has taken a battering in the portable music player market to Apple Inc.’s iPod,” Kageyama reports. “There is even some speculation in the Japanese media that Sony should drop the Walkman brand — a name associated with Sony’s rise from its humble beginnings in 1946 with just 20 employees to one of the first Japanese companies to successfully go global. ‘The Walkman’s gap with the iPod has grown so definitive, it would be extremely difficult for Sony to catch up, even if it were to start from scratch to try to boost market share,’ said Kazuharu Miura, analyst with Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.”
“Earlier this year, Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer announced a new team of executives and promised to bring together the hardware electronics and entertainment content divisions of Sony’s sprawling empire — an effort that he said will turn around Sony and restore its profitability,” Kageyama reports. “But Stringer, and his predecessors, have been making that same promise for years.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like Sony’s Stringer is listening to this guy.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
