Sony to Exit Notebook Market?

The following article from Forbes speculates that Sony may exit the PC market in the next few years.

A few highlights (lowlights?):

Now that HP is Dead, Which PC Manufacturer Will Be the Next to Fall? - Forbes

 

Lol, that's a problem. People think Sony is trying to emulate Apple, while I have had superior Sony laptops since when Apple laptops were deemed fit only as bulletproof toilet covers

However, I do feel Sony is slipping up on a lot of corners...

 

Unfortunately, both of your statements are correct.

 

sony to exit notebook market because of apple ? it's a little bit non sense to me, sony vaio has it's own class, especially z series, it surely beats up macbook pro, even it comes with a premium price tag,

apple worshiper should open their mind, that there are better products than apple if they want to spend premium price

 

I doubt this will happen...but if it does, I think that they will still make laptops for Japan.

 

That article is actually really bad. HP is just planning to spin off its personal computer development. That is, create another company that exclusively handles personal computer development. That doesn't mean they are exiting the PC market. It just means that instead of software and hardware development in the same company they are planning to split the company into two where one develops software and the other develops hardware and both have more automony. I note that its PC operations are still profitable worldwide. It just doesn't get the margins it used to.

Its not even comparable to IBM selling Thinkpad to Lenovo (which by the way is working out great).

 

Absolutely true. Too many people, including writers looking for a provocative story, confuse changes in the market with failure.

 

Where Sony leads, others follow. I don't see how their success is tied to Apple's own rise. VAIO notebooks have always held their own; distinctive in both style and performance. Whilst there have been duds, I feel most VAIOs have been very well designed and are eye catching from the get go.

It's probably not true anyway, but if Sony were to exit the notebook business, the laptop market will lose a true champion and leader.

 

Yeah, what HP is doing is what Volvo Trucks did to Volvo Cars a bit over a decade ago (spun off the division and sold it to Ford to get a capital influx to purchase another company (in that case, Scania trucking) that would have better synergy with its core business operations (in HP's case, servers and printers). It's NOT the same as killing the company. The article's title is hopelessly sensationalist.

What I think Sony needs to do, though, is have two separate brand names, so that the premium Vaios (S, F, and Z) are immediately separate in people's mind from the E, C, etc. The E and C sell in big numbers at low prices, and aren't really all that great machines. Problem is, they make people think that Vaio is a Dell/HP/etc mass-market consumer-class competitor, not an Alienware/Apple/etc high-end consumer-class competitor, and that makes it harder for Sony to sell the S, F, and Z at the price points they deserve.

I would propose using the "Vaio" name ONLY for the S, F, and Z, and having a different name for mass-market machines like the E and C. Both would say Sony somewhere on them, but the "Vaio" badge would be come the mark of an up-market Sony option.

 

Well if the "Vaio" name is already "tainted" then why not keep it for the "lower end" models and come up with a new name for their "premium" line?

But I agree they need to separate classes, kind of like Lenovo IdeaPad and ThinkPad. Granted those are more separating consumer from business lines but same thing applies.

 

^ is the series line distinctive enough ? sony cannot just drop the VAIO name, it represents the sony notebook revolution from 1998

 

^^ I think he means keep it for the high end, and call the low end lines something else. Like how Lenovo has kept the Thinkpad line for it's upper cut, while "Ideapad" is reserved for the consumer junk.

 

You raise a fair point. I wouldn't disagree with using "Vaio" for the base models. Or maybe using "Vaio" for the base and "Vaio ______________" for the higher-end (I was thinking "Vaio Signature," but they're already using that for overpriced unique-color options).

 

I'm not sure I agree. If I want a computer with certain specs (size, display resolution, processor, etc.), I just want to know which models a manufacturer offers that may meet those requirements without having to parse through whether the manufacturer considers it a home machine, small business machine, etc. The differentaion may make sense for a few limited cases such as Dell/Alienware, but not as a general rule.

 

Well, even Dell seperates between "premium" XPS, "basic" Inspiron, "cheap business" Vostro, "premium business" Latitude, and "workstation" Precision.

 

I think this is true for most people who are well-educated on a particular subject, but those people are 1% of the people in the market. For example, a car guy would be looking for a particular chassis, engine, interior features, etc and not care whether it had a VW badge or an Audi badge. But for 90% of people, the revelation that a Volkswagen R32 is the exact same car as an Audi A3 3.2 Quattro is SHOCKING. People who would be totally happy with the R32 except for the badge don't consider it because "I don't want the same sort of car as my neighbor's teenager's Rabbit."

Apple cut the plastic MacBook out of their lineup, and while I think that's sad from a consumer's perspective, I don't doubt that it has helped with the prestige of the rest of Apple laptops and helps Apple's sales numbers on the $3000 machines.

 

^^Yeah, as much as I loved the old whites, their days were numbered when ULV Sandy Bridge came out in the Airs.

Oh, well, at least it helps solidify Apple's lineup, as you said.

 

Sony really shouldn't go high end only. Thats one of the main problems with Sony right now. They pump ungodly amounts of cash into making these flights of fancy that have no real utility and then set the base price higher than what any normal person can sanely afford. But thats why we love Sony right?

Imho they can still do that but they need to release at least one computer product that doesn't have an obscene price tag and is good for what it is, not half of a flagship product.

Sony's recent non Z product ranges looked curiously like variously gimped Zs. Its like walking into a secret lab of horrors and seeing glass tanks full of aborted Zs where the mad scientist got it wrong and had to start over. F1? A big fat whistling Z. S1? A miniature F1 with a crap display. E1? FAIL. SA? Very close to being the bride of Frankenstein Z1 but oh the display!

They also need to drop the pretense about making business machines, but they haven't fooled the majority anyway. Theres a reason why I never see entire companies using Sony lcd displays and computers like I see them using Dells, HPs and Apples. Walk into a branch of AIB here and all the lcd displays are Dells. Sony don't make workstations, they don't give you stuff that people doing work actually need, like proper multi monitor support or a durable chasis capable of surviving a knock or ten. They sure as hell don't have the enterprise class after sales support.

They give you tonnes of stuff you really shouldn't be using when you are working like gaming graphics and a blu ray player, but they don't give you enough gaming power to actually be proper games machines.

I don't think its unfair to say that Sony is good at making grown up toys. Really expensive, super desirable toys. You don't know why you want one or what you'll do with it, you just know you want one.

But Apple already do that. You can call them overpriced and you can say Apple computers were styled by Dr. Dave Bowman after an acid trip in a completely white room and you wouldn't be wrong. But all their stuff does the fundamentals right. I don't think its an accident that MBPs are top 3 ranking in 4 out of 6 notebook classes on notebookcheck.net.

Its not like they don't have their flaws but they all have solid fundamentals: good build quality, good displays, good haptics, good mobility and good aftermarket support. The price of admission is owie owie owie expensive but for people that can front the cash? I think the solid fundamentals play a big part in feeling like you got value for money.

Sony is sketchy in half of that list in their flagship product. Its just depressing to think about how many of the fundamentals their budget products don't pass.

 

I'm not sure I have the enthusiasm I once had to even respond to this ridiculously superficial and misleading article. As has been noted elsewhere in the Sony threads here, Vaios have suffered from very uneven quality and performance and apparently (I've been lucky enough so far not to experience it personally) abominable customer support. You really don't need to have a true phenomenon like "Apple," or a major market transition (away from PCs and notebooks to, well, I refuse to call them "tablets," but let's just call them smaller, lighter, cheaper devices for content consumption, a significant segment of what was the notebook market) to explain Sony's decline, and it is not just their computers. The company has lost its prestige and dominance in TVs (again, they'd be doing poorly even if that market wasn't experiencing anemic growth), motion pictures and virtually every category of consumer electronics they used to lead for one basic reason: severe cutbacks in R&D resulting in a lack of innovation, failure to adapt to new market and product trends, mostly mediocre products at premium prices and, this can't be stressed enough, increasingly terrible customer support.

Back to computers, this market is clearly going through numerous major changes, but with dynamic players like Samsung, Lenovo, Asus, even Acer (if they can get their quality/customer service act together) it is way premature to cede all the products to tablets and smart phones and all the market share to Apple. Sadly, HP was really on a roll with both their consumer and business notebook business when that dweeb Apotheker (you want to predict demise in this business? Start with his employment!) totally botched what could have been taken as a brilliant strategic move that began with a spinoff and paved the way for a player looking to get in with an instant 20% market share (many candidates; I won't prognosticate who best). Instead he made this ridiculously clumsy announcement that was tantamount to: "today I decided we're going to get clobbered in the computing device market so we're gonna dump that business as soon as we can, and just to show I'm serious, effective this minute, WebOS and the HP Touchpad are dead, gone, history RIGHT NOW!" Never mind the rave reviews of that OS and the fact that the Touchpad was on its way to being crowned the tablet most likely to take a serious run at the iPad.

The good news is that Moore's Law is as prophetic as ever and that there are limitless uses to the unbelievably powerful, cheap and tiny products benefiting by that pace of technological advance. Just because some of the players are just losers, who never knew how to succeed other than by pumping out as much volume as possible at the lowest prices (are you listening, Dell?) - usually 1-2 generations behind on innovationss - and because too many tech journalists have been on a high writing the same story, over and over: notebooks and netbooks are dead, tablets are going to replace them entirely and Apple will have 50% - 75% market share in every market that matters for the future. And, of course, where they can't win with products, they'll keep competitors out of markets with patent suits.

Take a deep breath, celebrate the diversity and energy to innovate and compete that many still-vibrant companies have in their DNA. And sure, mourn the passing of the Sony Vaio brand (dying a slow death of self-inflicted wounds) and feel angry at the possible decline or demise of the HP brand, especially in the consumer market, simply because a grossly incompetent CEO with zero experience in the device business, took a period of flat sales, declining margins and new product forms as an opportunity to instantly destroy over $50 billion of market value in his company and kill off the second most valuable brand in the in the business.

Final point: if Sony and HP really are - for very different reasons - about cede 15 or more market share points, take a front row seat to see what the dynamic "survivors," especially those from Korea and Taiwan, are going to do to claim that share for themselves with awesome designs, aggressive marketing (including customer support) and an unwillingness to let Apple suck in every new customer up for grabs in the market.

Ok, I could have done a much better (and more succinct!) job advancing my thesis here, but does anyone think it has any major flaws or inaccuracies? Please, do jump in and tear it to shreds; just try to leave the emotions and your love of the Sony Z (no one feels it more than i do!) out of the analysis: the products we love from Sony have never been more than white noise in Sony's own sales, much less the total market's.

 

Resurrect the Qualia name!!!

 

Sony's customer service is to blame. I bought myself a Vaio P just when it was released for a whopping $1200. After 1 year and 2 months, the battery started to loose its charge (I know how to take care of batteries). I just asked for Sony if I could buy a new battery locally and they told me "we only keep batteries for the new models". What? Why would a brand new laptop need a new battery? (okay, exceptions are there - for example - people who like to carry two batteries).

After two years of use, its HDD died. I called them if they could repair it. Two days after, they told me that they can repair it for $500. WTH! I ended up repairing it myself.

While I hate Mac OS X on my MBP, the customer service from Apple is nothing but awesome. Asus' customer service is best IMHO in the PC world.

edit:

Correct. I played around with the cheap Vaio YB last week and its keyboard felt cheaper than my ~3 year old Asus Eee PC 701. The similarly priced Asus Eee PC 1201T that I own has much better construction and is still working like a champ (typing this post on it) after 1 3/4 years of use.

 

Qualia (Sony) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is EXACTLY what I was thinking of. Sell the C and E and the like as "Vaio" through third-party retailers (Best Buy) or the Sony Store (physical or online). Sell the S, F, and Z as "Vaio Qualia" or just "Qualia," and only through the Sony Store (physical store or online, but no Best Buy sales). That way, there's enough brand connection that the reputation of the Qualias trickles down to the mass-market models (they're all Sonys), but people still know they're getting something fancier than a Best Buy Sony when they drop $1500-$2000 on a Qualia.

And make customer service for Qualias at least closer to Apple's customer service than your typical mass-market brand, even if you can't just snap your fingers and create Apple-quality support overnight. Dell has a separate customer service line for Alienware owners. Something like that would be a good start.

 

I wonder how much a Qualia branded laptop would cost...

 

This is another one of those "Apple is buying Sony" type ridiculous rumor based articles
The writer should at least have checked the last few Sony financial reports before coming out with this crap.

Clearly the writer is unaware or maybe ignorant of facts and reality. Sony will NOT exit the PC market because

a) Their VAIO PC division is in fact one of the fastest growing Sony brands in terms of sales and profits. ( Not sure but I think it is THE fastest growing of all Sony businesses currently)

b) Since last year their sales have been increasing and the Vaio division makes profits for Sony when the TV business is still in the red. VAIO and Cybershot/Alpha are Sony's biggest cash cows today

c) It is also one of the few categories where Sony has strong brand recognition and a strong base of loyal customers unlike most other businesses.


We shouldn't even bother discussing such sensationalist articles which bear no connection with actual facts.
Vaio division is in a better position today than it has ever been, and it will only grow further unless something seriously bad happens.

 

well if sony made a Qualia Z series, it would go up to 5k, and we should expect something like leather lid, leather wristrest, better display than current Z, and if sony would take F series as their base model, it would surely competes directly with alienwares

 

^
Haha true 5k minimum

But seriously, I don't see any super premium Vaio at least in the near future. Sony is looking at profits and they won't want to make losses by selling super premium products that won't sell enough.

 

haha may be if its true, we should expect oled screen on sony qualia notebooks

 

The idea that Sony feels the need to emulate Apple in the PC market or drop out because of them is ridiculous - Apple has never had more than ~6% of the personal computer market, and survives today because of tablets, smartphones, and iTunes media services, not computers.

Sony themselves have acknowledged (PC Pro Magazine, April 2010) that their growth in the market has been slowed by the lack of a budget line of VAIOs, but they also said last year that they would not develop another brand to sell them as building another brand would be too large an investment in resources.

 

Hmm OLED Vaio maybe by 2016.

 

It's profit margins, not sales numbers, that make a company profitable. Look at Porsche and look at GM.

Anyway, people, I'm not advocating jacking up the price of the F, S, and Z four-fold and making palmrests out of dolphin skin. That's not what I meant. I think the pricing of the F, SA, and Z is fine where it is, but shallow as it may sound, I think a different badge (besides just the alphanumeric model name itself) would help people understand that they're getting a more premium machine than their run-of-the-mill Best Buy Vaio if they pony up for an F, SA, SE, or Z.

An Acura badge helps sell the TL, even though it's actually just an incredibly-well-built-up Honda Accord. Putting a Qualia badge on the F, SA, SE, and Z, and giving those four models their own customer service telephone number, I think would help a lot of less-informed customers justify spending $1500 on a moderately-equipped F22, $2500 on a moderately-equipped Z, etc.

 

I'm sorry but I'm also one who believe sony makes overpriced toy rather than some business machine.

I'm not convinced there is a great future in that. I'm a longtime user of Thinkpad, and I would agree that Thinkpad are expensive laptop as well , but from a business point of view I always thought I got my money worth.

Now I've been lurking especially there new Z as it really is what I've been looking in a laptop far a long time. But I'm really not confident in Sony so its kind of hard to justify getting a 3k machine that will more than likely be poorly supported by the manufacturer as soon as the next model is out.

And I do feel that I'm not alone with this take on Sony.. looks likes a classy machine, smells like a business machine, priced like a business machine, supported like a disposable phone;

 

+1 for saying it perfectly, in as few words as necessary. Very sad, but oh, so true. I can't think of a single brand that was a long term success with a reputation for terrible customer support. Sony is fast becoming the laughing stock of the industry - too bad it's not funny to those of us who own (and love) their products.

 

True and it's irritating. The separate line for Alienware makes sense but not for all the other lines.

That pretty much sums it up right there. If the Informed Rumors are correct and Sony comes out with a Signature Gold Z22 tricked out to the max, I'll probably get it as there's nothing else like it. But so what? While it's ok as a halo product, it's not something to build a brand on. On the other hand, the Sony line isn't something on which to build a brand as, for lack of a better term, an MS Apple.

I'm so freakin' tired of hearing about those things. Other than a few niche uses, they're useless.

Patent Wars are the future of high-tech. Which is my way saying that the future don't look so hot, not because of technological limitations but because of management's strategic ethos and related decisions.

If I could, I would.

It might be nice as an option.

I've been really confused by people complaining bitterly about Sony customer support -- it made no sense to me. Then I realized they were talking about support from Sony not support for Sony from NBR Forums. That's just absolutely superb.

 

I think this is the exact opposite of what they should do. Quality and reputation don't "trickle" down. These are things you have to build from the ground up.

kdskamal mentioned the eee PC which is a very good case in point. eee PC really put ASUS on the map because alot of them have really solid fundamentals. They do the basics right, they do them well and importantly it has nothing to do with price because alot of the top rated ones are cheap in its class. I remember at one point that notebookcheck.net's netbook top 10 had 5 or 6 eee PCs in it, all sub €400. This tells us something. eee PC is pretty much synonymous with netbook these days in the same manner as xerox is synonymous with photocopiers and post-its are synonymous with little sheets of paper with reusable adhesives on the back.

You have to give kudos to ASUS for that. They built something good from scratch and the rep and the sales they got out of it were well earned and well deserved. I think Sony's habit of putting all the money into a high end product and then watering it down in all of its lesser product ranges is flawed in the current market place. Especially when they continue to ask for more money than the competition at every price point. Sony can still do this as long as they make an affordable product that is good on its own merits. Example: Roland released the cheap Juno-6 synthesizer when it was also making the monstrously expensive Jupiter-8. The Juno-6 however wasn't a watered down Jupiter. It was its own thing. It didn't do alot but what it did do, it did incredibly well. Now its a cult classic because to this day, there still hasn't been a synthesizer that gives you the good old Juno-6 sound and feel.

Apple's success is well deserved because every product they field at every price point has good strong fundamentals. They don't have a flagship product and then a series of compromises. They have a computer product in the desktop replacement, multimedia, subnotebook and ultraportable class plus server class desktops that hold their own for what they are. None of them are cheap compared to the competition which is the startling thing.

 

To make a further point, you cannot and should not be able to get away with putting a painted plastic palmrest into a computer that starts at £1,800. Worse still, you can't do that and then make it difficult and expensive for customers to buy a replacement when the paint wears off in the course of normal use. Its a fricking palm rest! it needs to be capable of withstanding a sweaty, oily wrist rubbing against it every day for 3 to 5 years. Thank heavens they didn't repeat that mistake in the Z2.

I don't think Sony is going anywhere in this market but the amount of untapped potential is really astounding. They could almost certainly take a big slice out of the Apple pie (pun intended) if they started doing the basics right like Apple has been doing for a good number of years now.

Also epbrown is correct. Apple became the two hundred billion dollar technology juggernaut it is today on the back of itunes, iphone and ipad. Thats their holy trinity. Their computer division is comparitively niche which makes sense when an MBP15 starts at £1800! Alot of people couldn't afford one even if they wanted one. I can't help but feel however that when it comes to music players, phones and computers, Apple is doing everything right that Sony has been doing wrong in recent years.

This is so true it hurts. If you are part of a technology company right now, you will have a legal department building patent portfolios just to use as leverage against all the infringements claims you will get bombarded with. It has given rise to the term "patent trolling" and this is just the way the business is. I don't think it will ever change unless intellectual property law is radically changed.

It is taking its toll on independents, particularly 1 man software developers (i.e. apps developers) that can easily infringe on tech company patents without knowing and then get trolled into paying a revenue stream to the patent holder or be forced into protracted litigation that 1 man cannot afford to see through to the end. Even if they do have a case worth fighting for.

I note that Apple recently sued Samsung and won. Its funny because there are loads of Samsung products in an iphone 4. i.e. flash memory. But these tech giants can have multiple law suits ongoing between each other at the same time. Always it is for leveraging negotiating position, to squeeze costs here or open an extra revenue stream here or to leverage a settlement or a better deal on contract.

 

I prefer the term "bullying" to "trolling" but we are talking about the exact same thing.

 

yep. I've gone through quite a few models.. the S, SZ, FE, FZ, N.. all of them developed some serious problems in its life time (in fact out of all of them.. only one still runs.. surprisingly the low end N.. although some of the ports are no longer working). It was a pain to get help directly from Sony to fix some of these issues, and the times they could.. demanded alot of money. My Thinkpad and Dell Precision still going on strong and still getting support as easily.

its quite a shame because I really like the specs and looks of the SA, Z, and that upcoming 15" S model. but my past experiences make me shy from buying Sony again.

 

Thinkpads are also expensive to fix and the costs of parts are just outrageous. I own a x60 tablet that has been a pain.

 

This topic has inspired so many great observations, and it is really important. I feel the need to hand out "awards" (yes, +1s for all) for: 1)really great analysis, IMHO, 2) outstanding ideas, and, 3) anything that made me laugh each time I re-read it

And yes, I do expect many flames...but this topic is HUGE and the responses I've quoted (I wish I could've done more, but how long can one post be, lol?!!) show that it is quite emotional for the Sony fan base. Have at it!

The name is great, but you do realize that the first 5 letters are the same as in the word "quality," right? Branding won't make it so, I'm afraid.

Hard to provide a better case in point for Sony to be the brand Leo Apotheker should've assassinated that Friday two weeks ago, not HP! Sure, the P was a very tiny niche-of-a-niche market product, but even more reason for Sony to offer premium support for it. Why in the world would anyone pay a month's rent for a computer-thingy toy if the second it breaks you have to throw it away? And if that's how they support these toys, who in their right mind will continue to pay used-car money for "toys" like Z's, that also have to do your real work, when they blame every failure on "user abuse?

A+++ for saying it better than anyone else could! (I may have already noted that earlier )

Wow, I never thought of interpreting the term that way! It is quite an irony that, judging by NBR Sony fan-boy/girls, the company is adored, while judging from the abuse Sony puts [us] through, they deserve to be reviled!

(Personally, I'm very late to the game. I just happened to discover the VPC-Z1 just as it was ending it's first year. Definitely the best computer Sony has ever made; probably the best anyone has ever made, and that may have been what VGN-Z owners said before the VPC-Z1, but I think Z1 owners are safe saying that now that the possibly most disappointing follow-on product ever - the VPC-Z2 is, well, history (my pun, my analysis).

I would add modify: Apple is doing everything right that Sony and most other competitors have been doing wrong - the difference is that Sony is the only one that has had the brand power, entertainment content assets and worldwide relationships to have handed Apple their lunch, which is what they would have done if "Sir Howard Stringer," a guy who still thinks broadcast TV is the future, wasn't running Sony into the ground! HP's Leo Apotheker gets the award for destroying a global brand over the course of an hour, but Stringer has personally presided over the near-extinction of the company best positioned to own every market segment as few as 10 years ago; we're talking a $200 billion dollar ripoff of stockholders vs. Apotheker's puny $50 billion (though, on an hourly basis, Apotheker has Stringer's lunch - which soon, neither will be able to afford!)

 

Sony is very bad at promoting their notebooks. They are first to introduce the carbon fiber material but talk a little about it. If Apple were Sony, they would be shout out loud that they invent the carbon fiber material and heavily promote it.

 

God damn is the value of Apple up to $300 billion already? I had a timeline that went up to 2010 and between acquiring NEXT till a year after rolling out iTunes the value of the company jumped something insane like $100 billion.

 

I toyed around with an MBP13 on Sunday in a local Apple Store and its got that desirable toy feel of the Z. I picked it up and wiggled the display, fiddled with the touchpad, clacked on the keys and I came away thinking that I wanted one for some inexplicable reason. Its a very attractive notebook in the flesh. I don't get that from the promotional shots but its so dinky in real life and it has such a small silhouette with great lines.

Its seemed well built (I thought it would feel like a slab of cold hard metal but it feels soft and warm in a strange sort of way). The design is ridiculously simple, which I like in a utilitarian ruggedness. It had a firewire port! Joy of joys, its one of the few things in a notebook that I absolutely must have! And it has a Texas Instruments firewire chipset. I was almost in love! Stick an anti glare display in there and crank the resolution up to HD+ and it would have been my ideal notebook. Then I gawked at the price and shuffled away like the plebian a4 paper farming wage slave that I am.

 

The MBP is definitely one of the sturdiest notebooks around. Using one, you can almost feel like it's a tank of the laptop world - solid, well-designed (yeh, I know), and... heavy. I'm not very fond of rounded laptops, and that has kept me from desirous glances toward the fruity PCs. Still, it is a pretty laptop for what its worth. I'm just extremely spoiled by the Zs' weight that I cannot stand heavy laptops these days. The MBA is about the only Apple laptop I'll consider getting. If I decide to use OSX at all, that is.

 

You thought it was heavy? I thought it was pretty light. Hell, I thought the MBP15 and 17 were light for how big they were. MBP17 in particular I was expecting to be thick and weigh a tonne but it felt significantly thinner and lighter than my old F12. It surprised the hell out of me actually.

 

Yeah, hard to believe, but it has the highest market capitalization of any US based firm - higher than Exxon Mobil, which is #2! Perhaps more striking, most analysts believe - and I am hard pressed to disagree fwiw, that if anything Apple's stock is undervalued at it's present price. It's trading for about 12X expected earnings over the next 12 months and given its likelihood of continuing to grow earnings at over 100% year-over-year for at least the next several years, a 12 multiple would translate to a "screaming buy" in today's market. Don't bet against it, at least not soon.

Then again, looking at the avalanche of products displayed at the IFA conference and the seemingly unlimited inventiveness of so many players in the device market, I am somewhat comforted that Apple is not destined to increase its market share; it will remain strong, but will more than likely lose market share in every segment except two notables:

1) laptops - there will be 5-7 models to compete with each Mac over the next year or two, but if they continue to turn out exceptional products and price them aggressively (eg, the recent MBAs), their relatively small share (about 8% overall) of this segment is likely to grow for a while

2) software, by which I mean: everything from "apps," (aka, cheap, cute, special purpose widgety stuff), music, video, books, magazines, newspapers and, yeah, stuff that actually is software! The Android market is to diffuse to offer stiff competition here and, given that Apple drains 30% off the top of every sale and, once you have one "computing device" (eg, Mac, iPad, iPhone) and an iTunes account, they have your credit card number and the best thing since Amazon's "one-click-shopping" to suck up all the software/content purchase market. Ironically, the only real competition in sight to take them down a peg? Yep, Amazon! Watch not only for their new tablet for $250 or less (ultimately, $99 is where we are headed), but the tie in to their "Prime" service, which will soon encompass not only every piece of content you could buy for your media devices, but as the "World's Largest Store," the new Kindle Tablet could be the vehicle by which Amazon "teaches the master" a thing or two about world domination via device/credit card linkage to the purchase of, well, how many items are in Amazon's current "catalog?!!".

I'm sorry, I'm just really juiced about this whole subject and it rightfully should be the #1 topic of discussion for anyone who cares about this space. The hook into the Sony thread is just that they are a pathetic example of how to take a major strategic advantage in every market that will matter - hardware, software and content - over the next 10 years at least, and blow their lead across the board.

Here's a tantalizing thought: forget also-ran Motorola Mobility; why doesn't Google buy Sony? Now that would provide a way more exciting reason to stay glued to media in 2012 than the depressing US presidential elections.

 

^^If Google buys sony, they better not use the ChromeOS Crap... AT ALL. And I speak as a CR 48 owner (and I have invested a lot of hours into making this work the way I want - I really don't want to install Win7 or a real linux distro, as I feel it violates the spirit of the dev platform).

Sony does remind me of Motorola, but in a different way. In 2004-2007 or so, Motorola had an unprecedented lead in the Moto RAZR. It was the best of the best, a fashion icon, a powerful little phone. Later models even had an nVidia GoForce GPU inside!! However, they decided to make POS revisions of it, namely the V6 (barely tolerable), and the V9 (die Moto). The V3xx, as far as I am concerned, was the last great RAZR. Motorola had a lead in more that just simple marketshare - they had media attention, unintended (meaning, it wasn't for money - it was to make the movie better, not promote a product) showings in entertainment culture, and serious mindshare. Motorola managed to blow all that. and they blew it hard.

Their current top end smartphone, the Moto Atrix, is a joke, and I speak that way as an Atrix owner. They are purely lucky the SGII was heavily delayed, and the HTC Sensation was not on ATT. Otherwise, the Atrix would of been utterly ignored in every sense. Don't even bring up the webtop, because it is slower than my CR 48 in every way, yet still manages to be less useful (no multitouch scrolling!? really? - why not dock the phone INTO the touchpad area? make use of it's screen [like the Razer Blade], and make the dock smaller....) but nope. Moto managed to end up being a joke. I really hope Sony doesn't either. I have personally loved Sony products since the old SuperSlim Pro (but hated their useless support - as a business user), but I really don't want it to retain in my mind like my V3xx.

 

You would need a helluva warchest to buy Sony and any takeover bid would likely be hostile. I remember this issue cropped up when the size of Apple's warchest was revealed last year at something like 50 billion dollars, since there was speculation back then about Apple buying Sony. That idea was a dud though because theres too much overlap in their product ranges plus Sony will always be run from Japan.

Microtransaction is where its at right now. If anyone is going to spend 50 billion dollars its going to be on software infrastructure that facilitates large volumes of small payments. iTunes was a gigantic leap for Apple but theres plenty more where that came from. Just take a look at the kind revenues that sale of facebook virtual goods are generating. Facebook games raked in a billion dollars in 2009 and that racket costs pretty much nothing to build and run. Nearly all of that is profit.

 

Yeah, Sony, last I checked, still has a Fab business (NOT cheap), several LCD divisions/joint ventures, a movie studio (and distro), in addition to one of the largest music labels (Sony BMG means the WORLD outside of the USA - don't take this litterally ), finally, also a well known consumer electronics ODM/OEM group.


Not cheap in any reguard of the matter. I'm NOT even going to count all of their services in Japan/Taiwan.

 

Problem is, most of those business units are breakeven or losing ones. The traditional music businesses are nothing but serfs to iTunes these days, barely breaking even. The once "great empire" is, as the person describing Motorola said, a mere shadow of its former self. Agree about the fierce Japanese nationalism, but don't forget, Sony BMG and Sony Pictures were German and American companies respectively.

Every publicly traded company is always "for sale," but sometimes there are enough family owners to keep the price of takeover artificially high.

Of one thing I am confident: if far superior management doesn't soon take over - from within via acquisition, this brand is going to continue to plummet. Look at where it was 15 years ago compared to today, think of how fast things are changing, and think out the next 5-10 years. Just as the Motorola brand has faded so badly their only mobile phone products that sell are named "Droid" or "Atrix" with "Moto" no longer part of the brand. The "Sony" moniker will soon lose its brand equity as well.

(Btw, have I mentioned that my Sony Z118GX is the finest computer I have ever owned? Still has it in them, but only barely.) Pity.

 

^^ BMG was half German, but it's now 100% Sony, iirc.

Not everything is "breakeven," since iTunes doesn't mean much in east Asia...

I guess I should clarify.

Sony isn't one company. It's an entire conglomeration of little companies with a general (but rather tight) leadership. That would probably be the best way to put it; it even includes a sizable bank in Japan. The entire point of the arrangement is to prevent a takeover, hostile or not, simply due to the power of the bank + lack of a "main" corporation.

Either way, imagine it like NEC - most people don't know it's one of the largest IC design firms in the world, they only remember when NEC made consumer computers. While I hope that history doesn't draw parallels with Sony, it shows there are many facets to these businesses. BTW, Sony's music label is the second largest in the world - behind the french Venvidi (which we call Universal/Interscope).