What's Wrong with Sony?

We love their computers, we salivate for news of exciting new products in all their big categories of consumer electronics. But Sony is relatively restrained at CES 2012 and the market is waiting for Sony to show us the future of home entertainment, game consoles, video display technology, laptop computers, tablets, etc. Knock on their door and no one answers.

Buy a Sony product and get a taste of what it feels like to be disdained and abused by the company you just gave thousands and thousands of your hard earned dollars for products that break and Sony blames it on: "User Mishandling!"

A little insight into why, and into why this vaunted brand and 85 year old dynasty is not-so-slowly crumbling, and why, until they dump [Sir!] Howard Stringer, their Knighted British Chairman and CEO, who only worked in the US television network business - primarily CBS - for his entire career until he was, unimaginably, picked to run the largest consumer electronics manufacturer in the world in 2005, the first non-Japanese head in Sony's history. Stringer has publicly proclaimed on numerous occasions that he never understood or liked anything about the world of consumer electronics, multimedia, digital convergence, computers, video gaming. No, Howie is an old-fashioned TV and Radio Guy, and he's kinda having fun in the movie business, one of the few making money for Sony, which has lost money in every one of the past 4 years, and has just lowered their forecast for 2012 to say they might turn profitable, but only barely now. This while Samsung, LG, Microsoft, Apple, HTC, even hopelessly confused Hewlett Packard are all growing and making money hand over fist while Sony's incredibly shrinking consumer electronics business is losing money by the vaultful.

What happened to this once in a generation company, the Apple of the 20th century? Just a little taste of something rotten in Tokyo:

One small quote sums it up:

"Sony has a litany of excuses, including the the ever popular "lower expected sales," which is business euphemism for the dog ate my homework. Some of these issues are real, but the biggest one isn't on the list. Management has turned a venerable name in consumer electronics innovation, marketing, and operations into a bloated and bumbling bureaucracy that is too slow to react to changes in the market and too insistent on staying the course, even when it is clearly running into a brick wall.

But help is on the way!!! Stringer's replacement, Kazuo Hirai, 51, has spent most of his career at Sony in videogames, movies, music and other software businesses, playing a major role in developing the PlayStation in the 1990s, and he's taking over as President as soon as April 2012. Read all about it. First the terrible news. Then the hopeful news:

The Real Reasons for Sony's $1.1B Loss - CBS News
Howard Stringer to 'step down' as Sony's President

 

Japan had a rough year. A massive tsunami killed twenty thousand people and devastated much of the country. Oh yeah, and the tsunami also triggered the second biggest nuclear meltdown in history (which, due to amazing Japanese disaster response, didn't kill anyone). I'm sure a lot of Japanese companies, Sony included, are a wee bit slower with new product introductions right now than they would have hoped.

I also suppose that being hacked more than all their competitors combined probably had an effect on their overall capital and how much money they could put into pushing forward new product releases.

Still, it's not like Sony had nothing at all. There's the Playstation Vita and there's the Xperia smartphone. And they just recently released two tablets, both of which got very positive reviews at notebookcheck.net. Sure, Sony's got no big news on the laptop front at CES, sure. But it's not like the company as a whole is empty-handed for the whole year.

This has nothing to do with the rest of the post and just screams "troll with a vendetta" to me.

 

Sony's problems began long before the tsunami though. Its television business has been losing money for 7 years. Its hard to believe how much PS3 has cost the company when only a few years earlier they produced two of the biggest success stories in the industry back to back in PS1 and PS2. PS Vita is already struggling.

Its PC notebook division has long been a curiosity which has been discussed to death on this forum so I'm not sure if I should repeat it.

Discman and Walkman are dead. Not just the physical device but the brand name. They still make mp3 walkmans but you probably don't know what they look like and you probably still think of their cassette players when you hear the word "walkman". Sony was seriously late to the mp3 player game and has lost it to Apple, Creative and even Philips.

The strength of the Yen against the Euro and USD hasn't helped because Sony products appear on western shores with ever harder to justify pricetags. The Tsunami has played its part in the nosedive of Sony's share price for sure. The quote at the bottom of this FT article rings with a little grain of truth to me.

It doesn't seem like the company has a plan except to keep on doing what they've always done, restructure underperforming divisions (nearly all of them) and sack employees. Just cut cut cut to the bone until theres nothing left. Until they can't make competitive products anymore.

Sony has always made these wildly expensive flights of fancy like TT and Z series and they have always been best when they create hugely desirably products, made to be unique and unparalleled. I don't think they are used to the idea of competing with anyone. Apple proves you can still do high cost in a recession and their brand identity is so strong right now its crazy. Sony has lost that brand identity as demonstrated by the yearly shakeup of their entire notebook range. Its no wonder these things are expensive considering the number or proprietary parts and a year long manufacturing run before its successor is rebuilt from the design/concept level up.

I don't know. Playstation isn't the name it once was. Walkman brings you back to the early 90s. I don't think many people realize it is still in use today. Trinitron is dead. Bravia is just a rebranded Sharp/Samsung panel.

Nowadays they are like the anti Apple. They pump out an insane number of product lines which have great ideas but they all get shaken up/refreshed/redesigned/replaced before any of their flaws get fixed. Before anyone even knows whats wrong with them. They just throw all that stuff at the market and see what sticks.

 

unite Playstation, bravia TV, Walkman, alpha camera, Vaio, CellPhone, Tablet, Android

 

I don't see the point of releasing brand new models now.

Wait for Ivy Bridge & Windows 8. Anyone interested in tech taking the plunge now on a laptop (unless absolutely essential) is a tad foolish.

I'm sure Sony have a full refresh planned for later in the year. Z series aside, I just hope it's better than the garbage they released in 2011.

 

@Mitlov:

Quote:

Buy a Sony product and get a taste of what it feels like to be disdained and abused by the company you just gave thousands and thousands of your hard earned dollars for products that break and Sony blames it on: "User Mishandling!"

This has nothing to do with the rest of the post and just screams "troll with a vendetta" to me.

Mitlov, I think you know me better than that, do you not. In fact I have never had a bad experience of this nature with a Sony product, and stated so in a very recent thread created by the most recent victim of the customer service nightmare that is often, not always, foisted upon Sony Bravia and Vaio customers. And it is related to what's wrong with this company and its management, as we all know that you can't survive in a market competing with Apple, Samsung, even Asus with this kind of callous policies towards customer support, but it takes a business focus on these kinds of products and customers which Sony once had but has lost in these "dark" years, when the businesses were neglected and the wrong management was in charge. It is somewhat similar to what almost drove HP off a cliff last summer until the Board fired Leo Apotheker and stopped cancelling all of their product launches and killing off their consumer and entreprise hardware businesses.

As for all the reasons you have given for Sony's recent problems, you are correct, but so is Hayte, who points out, as does the article I linked, that Sony's consumer electronics business declines long predate the Tsunami and the Playstation hacks. And it has been discussed since Howard Stringer was put in charge of the entire company 7 years ago that he has little interest or understanding of hardware or software, and is primarily a TV programming guy.

In any event, I started the post because, frankly, this forum, once the most active and exciting of all brands has become more and more a "ghost town," and recent product launches have been mostly some good/some bad and "what were they thinking?" kinds of events. I thought it would be interesting to hear peoples' thoughts and insights into Sony the company, which seems to be taking so much of the excitement out of Sony, the product.

Troll is about the most offensive kind of forum poster, but to be accused of being one is also quite a shock, particularly when I have been complimenting your reviews, supporting some of your questions and am pretty much known for many annoying qualities , but troll is not one of them. Apology accepted.

 

I've never had a bad experience with Sony. I know people who used their warranty service and never had a bad experience. Others have. Such is life.

 

It's way too early to run with this statement. We just don't have the facts in the thread you are referring. I reserve my judgement because a rep in a Sony store initially said physical damage isn't covered. Usually, reps in the store don't make any warranty judgments, that's left to the technician, unless there is obvious signs of abuse. Add to it that this happened after returning from a trip....how was the computer stored during the trip? Was it in the luggage compartment? Carry on? What kind of case? When someone buys a Z2, they are buying a delicate instrument. That's the price we pay for having the thinnest and lightest 13" laptop on the market.

Please note that I'm not blaming the user either. We just don't know without pictures and more details. I'm not ready to jump on bashing Sony or the user without more information.

Regarding the remainder of your post.....the entire electronics industry has been sleep behind the wheel for over a decade. How can they allow one company....Apple....to leave everyone in the dust? At least Sony stuck with quality computers while many others were making bland looking computers. Mac computers look and feel excellent. Sony is the only laptop manufacturer who makes stylish computers to match quality of Macs. But people in the PC world generally only look at specs, not quality of build. This leads to many manufacturers to cut quality and compete on specs and price alone.

Don't know if you saw my review of my Z2 on YouTube. I stated that Sony customer service is one of the worst in the industry while I praised the Z2. I said that as long as Sony engineers keep innovating, Sony can slack on customer service. I had a bad experience with customer service when I owned my TZ and my phone number got blacklisted by Sony! I swore I would never own another Sony product again. Yet....I couldn't resist the Z2 and bought one. Engineering won over bad customer service.

After posting my YouTube video, I was contacted by Sony. They thanked me for the positive review of the Z2, but were concerned with my customer service remarks. I spoke to them in details about my past experience and they were appalled at the way I was treated. I got an apology and they said they are working hard on improving customer service. Just the fact that they saw my review and contacted me shows they are concerned with their image. To me, this is a positive sign for a company I have loved for decades.

I hope we see things improve at Sony. Their stock price fell by 50% in 2011. There is nothing really exciting at this years CES from any company. Just a bunch of ultrabooks....none of which can compete with the Z2.

 

@lovelaptops--Perhaps I was unfair in how I phrased it, but I think TraderJoe is spot on with his response to the same customer service comment.

I see the same comments about bad customer service on every other brand's subforum, particularly Dell and HP. Does Sony lag behind Apple in customer service? You bet. But everyone does. There's a reason that a MacBook Pro 17 with $2000 worth of hardware costs $3000...it's subsidizing that industry-leading customer service. Does Sony lag behind everyone besides Apple in customer service? I'm not so sure.

@Hayte--

And yes, Sony was having problems before the hack and the tsunami, though those were like pouring gasoline on a fire. The fact is, Sony is a higher-end electronics manufacturer, and the market for any sort of luxury goods was hit hard by the worldwide economic collapse in 2008. A lot of companies that weren't focused on bargain-basement, entry-level models are reeling.

And while Playstation isn't as dominant as it was in the PS2 era (the 360 has done really, really well for Microsoft), it's still in my opinion the best gaming console out there. And it's got a long and distinguished list of exclusives, including the God of War franchise, the Uncharted franchise, the Resistance franchise, the Killzone franchise, Heavy Rain, the Gran Turismo franchise, the Ratchet and Clank franchise...the PS3 is a good console. Nintendo is the one who is really sucking wind (I should know; I've got a Wii and the release of Xenoblade Chronicles is the first bit of good news in a looooooooong time).

And saying the PS Vita is already having troubles? It hasn't even been released outside of East Asia yet! Its North American release date isn't even until the end of February. Let's not call it a failure before it even launches.

 

Everyone (except Louche ) makes some excellent and well thought out points. That's what I was hoping to stimulate. I just wish to clarify a couple of things:

1) the recent poster's problems with a Sony warranty claim being denied because it was "owner abuse" is so far from being the first, 10th or 15th such story I've heard in the last 3 years about Vaios and Bravias in particular, (though I've personally been lucky with my Zs and my Bravia XBR.) This has been widely reported on in the trade media, not just the computer forums. And I've suffered from Dell and HP incompetence, but somehow that's not as irritating as arrogance, plus Sony charges a premium for a brand that hasn't existed for 10 years, Dell and HP are budget models. Anyway, it either bugs you or it doesn't. I just didn't want people to think it was all about the one guy with the Z2 screen problem.

2) I spent 20 years of my career in computer, telecom and consumer hardware manufacturing/marketing companies, and some are known for their R&D, innovation and design, some for their marketing - which includes very much customer service - and some because they are just so well managed that you always know what you're getting with a brand and it represents value. Sony used to have 25/30, 15 years ago or so. Now I'd say they're 5/10 for design/innovation, 3/10 for product marketing/customer service and 2/10 for management, for a toal of 10/30. (My rules, my numbers. ) It's the management, s----d.

3. Trader Joe: very interesting story and impressive. I hear you on getting sucked in to the highest of Sony's high end products, like the Z2 - though I quickly boxed mine up and sent it back before I was hooked because I read a handful of Z2/Sony horror stories the day I got it and I just didn't want $2,500 of my money tied up in the product with 80% proprietary Sony parts. The Z1 feels dowdy and sluggish by comparison, but I trust it and it's way more self-serviceable.

I think corporations are kind of like governments in that when they start behaving badly and going back on their word and abusing peoples' trust they should be called out for it. Sony has lost shareholders', employees', and customers horrific amounts of money, jobs and products they can enjoy comensurate with their cost, and all their trust. And it's mostly due to arrogant, fat, lazy bureaucratic management that was not tied to the soul of the company. I've seen people really burned by Dell, HP, etc, but you don't get the ire from those customers that you do from a Sony customer burned (or is it spurned?!). They have an arrogance that comes from the top down, and should be tarred, feathered and fired for it, which it has been. That's when turnarounds can take place.

By the way, Sony doesn't deserve such loyal customers as most of you are.

 

Totally false. Sony competes directly with HP and Dell's higher-end consumer lines, such as the Envy and the XPS machines. Similar configurations, similar prices. Compare the pricing of the Vaio F2 with a similarly-priced XPS 15 or 17, or the pricing of the Vaio SE with a similarly-equipped XPS 15z, or the pricing of a Vaio SA with an XPS 14z, and see for yourself.

In fact, I paid LESS for my Vaio F2 than I would have if I bought an XPS 15 with a quad-core i7, a 1080p screen, and a 540m.

Apple charges a brand premium. Alienware charges a brand premium. Sony, in 2012, charges exactly what every other manufacturer offering similarly-equipped higher-end consumer laptops would charge for them, the XPS and Envy lines being perfect comparison points. The "Sony premium," at least nowadays, is a total myth.

Based upon a survey of one person, with no discussion of what the methodology is...I think you know exactly how much those numbers are worth.

I don't think you spend enough time on the Dell and HP subforums if you think people don't get mad. I see more angst there than here, to be honest. Compare red-orange-gate for the Vaio SE with red-orange-gate for the Envy 15, for example. I'm counting four currently-active threads about the Envy 15's screen issues, and some people are MAD.

HP Envy & HDX

 

Forget I brought it up. This wasn't supposed to be a debate over whether Sony is better or worse than the other "clone" computer companies - at their worst. Being a little better than some low-end mass production box makers is not what made Sony a once-great company and it sure as hell isn't where it has any future. The pioneers that took risks and went for big things, that defined the future of entertainment and digital convergence, like inventing the Walkman, the Trinitron, the early Vaios, the PS line - they have been largely silenced and budget-cut out of the soul of a once truly iconic company. At least that's what I was hoping the discussion might be about. I know, this is a forum about laptop computers, so maybe all that is relevant here is whether Sony's laptop computers are no worse, and sometimes better than all the other laptop computers being made in China.

And I wasn't expecting arguments and insults, just spirited debate about whether the last great hope for keeping fruit logos from taking over the world had a chance of being up to the task, and what it should do if it is.

Or something along those lines...

 

You didn't expect insults? Well, the post to which you're responding didn't have any. I criticized the methodology of your number rankings, not you personally.

You didn't expect arguments? You came came into a Sony forum and started a thread called "what's wrong with Sony?" You said that Sony was a 25-out-of-30 company fifteen years ago and a 10-out-of-30 company today. And you didn't expect any argument?

I'm baffled by your use of the term "clone" to describe other PC manufacturers. Haven't heard that term in a decade or so. This isn't the era where Compaq would reverse-engineer IBMs and sell them for less. If a high-end Dell or HP--say, an Alienware M17x--is a clone, what on earth is it a clone of?

It sounds to me that instead of targeting the upper end of mainstream--like Sony is doing with its S, F, and Z models, like Dell is doing with its XPS and Alienware models, like HP is doing with its Envy models, etc--you want Sony to return to true luxury status, charging thousands of dollars for machines made entirely out of unobtanium, with space-shuttle tolerances all around. That's not a winning market model in 2011. Very few people, even rich people, are willing to spend $4,000 for a laptop in 2011. I think the range where Sony is putting its emphasis right now--higher-end consumer and prosumer models in the $800-$2000 range--is a much smarter long-term business plan.

Could Sony improve certain things? Sure. I think they should deep-six their Walkman mp3 player line and their e-reader line. I never see any in public; they've got to be money-losers for the company. The Playstation Move was poorly timed--it was an incremental increase over the Wii, but came out right before the revolutionary Kinect, which now owns motion-control gaming.

But the Vaio line isn't broken. Are they a bit late to the punch with ultrabooks? Sort of. Remember that half the first-gen ultrabooks were half-baked, rushed-to-market efforts anyway, and that if you get outside of the "ultrabook" label, Sony has some truly excellent thin-and-light offerings (S and Z). But for the most part, I think the S, F, and Z (the core Vaio models as I see them) are all doing well.

And the Playstation line isn't broken. As for consoles, the PS3 is still the go-to console for people who like quality single-player games. (XBox 360 owns multiplayer shooters, and Wii is the gaming console for non-gamers). As for the Vita, it looks like a really good portable system. Complaints about early Asian sales are missing the point. The problem is simple...it was released in Asia first, but with North-American-centric release titles (Uncharted: Golden Abyss, for example). If it had had a Monster Hunter game at the release date, it would have dominated in Japan. If it had released first in the US, it would have done great because of the Uncharted title and the like. Starting off in Japan with US-friendly launch titles is a way to bungle the launch, but it doesn't mean that the device will fail once it's available everywhere and once game selection includes more Japan-friendly games.

And the Bravia line isn't broken. Yeah, they pumped a bunch of money into 3D, and that market's already fizzling. But at the end of the day, I can still go to any electronics store and see that, even among mass-market priced TVs (like $300ish 720p models and $500ish 1080p models), that the Bravias have noticeably better picture quality than their competitors, who are often only about $20 cheaper. My next TV is going to be a Bravia, no doubt about it. I'll be a $500 Bravia, not some $5,000 flagship Bravia, but they still offer great products.

 

I guess I'll try throwing in some personal opinion here.

Well... Where does one start with Sony. It's a massive company for a start, with numerous non-electronic branches that I won't go into.

Sony' brand name has is being killed off rather slowly. It's slow, but most definitely not what it used to be when it had the gadget world within its grasp in the late 20th century. And obviously that's because Sony has stopped wowing the buying customer with things that, well, wow us. And couple that with horrendous customer support as mentioned above. They are hurting their own brand-naming selves. Really no two ways about it. And with their 'un-wow' products and the word-of-mouth reviews between friends, relative, media (online reviews), it's no suprise Sony is where they are.

Ok. So we know the above. We have for a few years now. As for the reason...

Management. Bureaucracy gone sour where the higher ups are more focused on managing themselves and their own paycheques, and that rather than quality control of products and customer service. Their to-step-down CEO for one. Why oh why would a huge tech company suddenly hire an individual who is obviously horrendously under-qualified to run and manage Sony's huge portfolio of products, which is obviously NOT limited to just TVs. Not that the TV sector (the Bravia brand) has done well; it's household knowledge that Sony has to buy Samsung (and apparently) Sharp panels to just barely stay in the market.

The management can restructure the sorry backsides of divisions all they want. End of the day the area that needs restructuring is nowhere else but management themselves. They have lost the initiative to be innovative. They have lost the will to control the lower downs. And they have lost to desire to care about the customer. It is now a sell-as-much-as-you-can-and-move-on matter. Nothing else is important. Turn a quick profit, make something newer (but not too much different from the previous generation), give it a new name, sell as much as you can, and repeat. And whenever some threatens that pattern, slap some DRM (cough-spyware-story-cough) and make sure you continue said process.

I don't know whether people noticed, but an example can be Sony's WALKMAN division today. Minus the touch screen, functionality between WALKMANs 4 years ago are pretty much NEAR IDENTICAL. I stand to be corrected here but you still can't record FM Radio. Line-in recording, whilst offered by the competition since frickin 2000 and earlier, is only recently available for Japanese Sony customers. And all for a huge premium.

Where is management here? The competition have been releasing more functionality-rich products for a decade and Sony hasn't learned. Well, they are VERY VERY SLOWLY. Why hasn't someone ordered the WALKMAN division to keep up with the times? Granted their DSP (S-Master) sound pretty good. But then, so does Cowon, who offer a myriad of functionality compared to Sony's current offerings.

Sure, Apple back in the day functionality wise were hopeless. iPods from the days simply had massive storage. Full stop. Yet they were successful nonetheless. But they had the foresight to market their items better. A HUGE investment to marketing. Getting the customer involved, why they should have this item. And when things went belly up being prompt in response (an investment into customer service). Sony meanwhile stood by, and when they got their MP3 Walkmans out (very late behind competition not helping), they immediately shagged themselves with SonicStage and DRM. Not to mention the earlier generation, their first models, only supporting proprietory music formats, making it difficult for individuals used to market-standard .mp3 to migrate to Sony. I mean, where was Sony's market research team? Someone just had to ask potential customers what they'd like to see a company offer. But they obviously didn't (or if they did they did a 'faeces' job). Customers want an easy-to-use GUI. Fast conversion speeds. And support. For the love of sweet baby Buddha. Customer service and support. But none of this. It was just a sell-and-move-on-strategy again. Forget the customer the best you can after you take their hard-earned money. All the while the market researchers just sucking the company's blood in the back doing jack. And the management doing nothing to reign them in.

Coming back to Sony's laptop division. Unfortunately I was not surprised when Sony split their VAIO division between high and mainstream, with the latter now being contracted out to other companies. So all Sony is doing right now is slapping on the VAIO and Sony logo on their now cheaper, mainstream products. Though the high end offerings like the Z2 are still fully Sony built. Management decided to save on money. I don't know myself, but where was the internal research that could've gotten the VAIO division to look itself in the mirror and assess how it could market, sell, and hence satisfy its customers? The answer here was customer service I'd say, which sadly enough is still an issue (with the 'occasional' satisfactory story).

The upper ups need to pull their heads out of each other's backsides and look at the world. What do people like. What brings customers back to you asking for more. And with enough market research, what's the next big thing?

Sony is a big company so managing it won't be easy. Yes. Smaller companies will fare better with fixing themselves. But Sony's managment has failed to notice it's failings early. Caring too much about themselves (the higher ups), they continued with business as usual until the issue grew and spread itself a malicious tumour. Hence their current state.

Yeah. It's just a rant but it's my personal opinion nonetheless. I stand to be corrected with the Walkman section and maybe some other places (or everywhere for all someone else cares), but I stand firm with issues the management has. Someone needs to give them all a good caning, and throw them out. Cause they're just sitting there clicking their pens and despite doing nothing, still getting their fat paycheques at the expense of the customer.

 

Wow. Wow. OMG.

In my wildest dreams, I never imagined such a thoughtful, knowledgeable, insightful, bold analysis to expand on my cheeky taunts would get posted here. Below I re-print a somewhat shortened set of "highlights" from 5ushi Monster's awesome post, citing those I think completely capture the points I personally was making - I'm not saying I'm "right" or others wrong, but I did start this thread with an acknowledged bias, so that bias carries over to my responses to others' posts.

Three words, though, summarize my response: what he said.

[EDIT: proved hard to pick just a few quotes and do it justice. Also, couldn't keep from adding a few comments of my own (and who's surprised by this? ), encased in brackets like this one]

So again, the quoted text below has been edited/shortened by me to accent the overall analysis best and highlight some truly great lines.

Seems you may get "corrected" rather heavily by some - though hopefully respectfully, and not for your facts, or on the legitimacy of your opinions in ways that may or may not be the case in some earlier posts and reactions on this thread. Your analysis is on such a higher level than mine, it will likely draw the respect it deserves.

You have added immeasurably to the dialogue, my friend. I have learned a lot and altered or augmented my own perspective from it. Thank you, and do stay on this thread. You have given it its life back.

Now, let's start this thread over with 5ushi Monster's post as the re-start opening post.

 

lovelaptops--stop with the victim act. It's tiresome and inaccurate. Nobody insulted your mother or your children. You got called a troll ONCE after starting a thread called "what's wrong with Sony" in the Sony forum, I retracted the comment later in the conversation. That's it. But you've been bleating about for two days. You think that's too ugly to take? Internet debate forums don't get any more polite than that, at least when you start a thread called "what's wrong with Sony" in a Sony forum.

@SushiMonster--The problem with blaming it all on "bad management" is that "bad management" is a conclusion, not evidence that supports a conclusion. I can point at Sony and say they have "great management," but unless we start talking specifics about what has been done with what model line, it's a meaningless discussion.

Yes, the Walkman mp3 players have flopped, but I disagree as to why. Every single brand of mp3 player besides the iPod flopped. Why? It's not the hardware. It's not the software. It's that the iPod offered integration with the dominant online music store at the time (iTunes Store), and nothing else did. Not Walkman, not Zune, not a thousand other failed mp3 player lines. Yes, Sony failed, but every single challenger to the iTunes store has failed. Does every single company besides Sony have bad management?

The same is now proving true with eReaders and media tablets. It's not that the Sony e-Reader and Sony Tablet S have bad hardware. It's that they aren't tied into a dominant media ecosystem. The ones that are (Kindle, Nook, iPad) are doing well; the ones that aren't (everyone else) are struggling. Does everyone besides Apple, Amazon, and BN have bad management?

Let's look at a few sample decisions Sony has gotten right. If the Walkman's failure is smoking-gun proof of bad management, these should be smoking-gun proof of good management, right?

Blu-Ray won the war with HD-DVD. Now most manufacturers offer Blu-Ray players on their laptops as an extra-price option, and watching Blu-Ray movies is one of the primary reasons cited by defenders of optical drives when Apple and ultrabook fans argue that optical drives are obsolete.

Sony is one of only two dominant consoles among serious gamers (I'm talking about people who go and buy dozens of games during the console's life, not Wii owners who own about four games and play them once a month, primarily Wii Sports at parties). It's a neck-and-neck race between Sony and Microsoft here, with the lead shifting each generation, but nevertheless, Sony is doing well and selling tons of consoles and games. Numerous other companies have dropped out of the console market.

Sony is the only portable gaming console for serious gamers. Yes, the Nintendo DS/3DS outsells the PSP/Vita when it comes to just hardware sales, but I bet most PSP owners own ten times the games of your average DS owner. It's the same serious gamer/casual gamer split as between the PS3/360 and the Wii.

Sony, along with Apple, have led the way on ultraportable laptops. Go into any "ultrabook" thread and you'll see people grousing about wanting 900p resolution and a dedicated GPU. Oh wait, the SA has had those since the beginning of 2011. And the SA actually weighs less than the heaviest of "ultrabooks" (the Envy 14 Spectre, which weighs 3.8 lbs). And the Z speaks for itself. The fact that everyone is looking at Sony's prototype ultrabook and just saying "hey, looks just like the Z, only presumably with lower price and lower performance" is testament to just how cutting-edge the Z was. It's not that the Sony ultrabook's design is dated; it's that the Z was ahead of the curve.

Chicklet keyboards. Demand for them is everywhere. Who started it?

Matte screens. Everybody is clamoring for them, and other companies are just starting to re-introduce them. Once again Sony is ahead of the curve.

High-res screens. I think Sony is more likely to offer 900p and 1080p options than any other mainstream manufacturer.

Minimizing bloatware. A few years ago, Sony had some of the worst bloatware out there. People complained. Sony listened. Now, Sony has some of the least-intrusive software on the market, particularly if you select "fresh start." I didn't do a fresh install when I got my machine. I uninstalled one program (ArcSoft webcam software) and otherwise, I love how it came straight out of the box in terms of software and drivers. How many XPS, Envy, high-end Asus, etc owners can say the same?

Awful lot of good decisions for "bad" management if you ask me.

 

@Mitlov I'll bite

Sony does have a serious management problem: all those divisions are completely separate companies under the same brand. They do not talk to each other, they do not work with each other.

Walkman failure? Their division probably did not know that Sony Music BMG existed to tap into that resource and build an online shop/community properly.

Ever since Sony bought Sonic Foundry, they have a nice set of media making software products on offer, for consumers, semi-pro, and, arguably, professionals. Look up ACID Pro and Music, Vegas, etc. Now, what does your VAIO laptop have thrown in as a freebie? Adobe Elements products. Ri-i-i-ght...

For a time Vegas Pro was the only video editing application that worked with XDCAM natively. Did Sony promote it with their cameras? Nope.

I say management IS the largest problem at Sony. However they reorganize the divisions, unless different parts of company start working together, they are not going to succeed. The whole is bigger than a sum of parts.

 

My F23 didn't come with Photoshop Elements. Instead, it came with ACID Music Studio 8.0, Sound Forge Audio Studio 10.0, and Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10.0. Isn't that exactly what you said Sony management should be doing?

Other examples of Sony divisions working together? Here's just four off the top of my head:

(1) Being able to "throw" movies from a Tablet S to a Bravia TV to play them remotely.

(2) Transfer Jet wireless data transfer from Sony cameras to Sony computers.

(3) Playing Crash Bandicoot or Wild Arms on an Xperia Play smartphone or a Tablet S (sure, the Playstation Suite is still in its infancy and needs much better game selection, say, MGS Peace Walker, but it's still a great idea that brings together multiple Sony divisions).

(4) The "True Black" display (True Black being sourced from Bravia) on the Tablet S.

Yes, the Walkman line has failed. But why make that the primary example? After a decade where everyone but Apple failed to market mp3 players, even those tied into online stores and even those with a lot more resources thrown at them than Sony did (*cough*Zune*cough*), the entire mp3 player market is collapsing, as more and more people listen to mp3s on smartphones and media tablets instead of dedicated mp3 players. I'm glad Sony didn't, say, cut into the PS2 and PSP budgets to pump more money at trying to take down the iPod. Every single company that did that failed.

 

What you said is completely correct. However, it's correct because although the Sony machines are competently high-end, there's nothing special about them. Sony doesn't charge a premium for them because they can't. Apples, by constrast, are broadly perceived by consumers as being worth a premium.

The Z2 is the exception. It would command a premium except there's nothing out there with comparable specs for it to have a price premium over. Irrespective of whether you prefer a Z1 or Z2 design, there's no question that Sony achieved a breakthrough with the Z2. A year later at CES and there's still nothing that else at any price that can match the Z2's specs. That's really amazing. I can't think of another computer product that has kept a lead that long -- particularly when its key advantage, small & light, is the hot trend.

However, I can't think of another Sony product that is in a similar position, and this touches on some of the issues raised by 5ushiMonster. You mention the Bravia TVs and I've also noticed that at a major retailer, the Sonys are among the best if not the best. At specialty shops, the Sony is competitive but rarely the best - depending on the shop. What Sony does not have is a television equivalent of the Z2. Pioneer did before they exited the plasma business. A year later, even two years later, people were complaining that there was nothing on the market that could match it.

My take is that Sony is currently capable of great product breakthroughs, and had one with the Z2. As far as I know, however, it's their only one on the market. I can't complain. They make the product I want and no one else does. It would be nice to see them do it more often.

 

Yep. That's a good start. Still a long way to go to build an ecosystem that connects everything and, most importantly, lures an owner of one Sony product to buy another because that empowers the user, not because that's the only thing it can connect to due to proprietary interface.

I have not. Walkman was a central topic since the first post.
Speaking of dedicated MP3 (or rather media) players. Cowon is doing just fine. Not so much in US as they did not even attempt to advertise here, just explored the market. They are doing excellent in Korea.

 

It wasn't Stringer who laid Sony low and turned it into a bureaucracy.

He was, if anything, trying - trying being the operative word - to take Sony out of the disastrous Idei period: The period that gave us NetMD when iPods were already widespread. If Sony hadn't been totally asleep, totally complacent and determined to treat their music-consuming customers as thieves from the outset, Apple would have been dead as a dodo right now.

 

Sony has slipped down, like all other Japanese companies I can think of. Just they were at the forefront (at least outside of Japan), for a while.

Maybe then can regain the spirit they once had, the sheer engineering know how, vertical integration. But I doubt that. Of the 8 major Japanese conglomerates I can think of right now, Sony is among the smallest and weakest.

At any rate, I don't think it's possible, at the (obviously important) low-mid range to outdo their Taiwanese ODM/OEM parteners (actually, I think all of the actual laptop ODM are Taiwanese or owned by TW owners) anytime soon, however, in the high end - where I have always remembered Sony - they have a good chance of being unique enough to put up a real presense. Though... admittedly... the only laptop I have a real interest in, next round, is an ODD-less Vaio S sucessor.


I dunno, really. Maybe Sony will wake up and have a more focused drive (like Apple?) on their existing product lines, maybe they will decide to push it, in some nebulous way, to the next world (slide+dock tablet comes to mind), maybe, they will continue the slow slide and be nothing more than another footnote in the history of major Japanese brands. I don't know if they have finally realized how strange they are right now... a company that has almost every line of electornic product concieveable, and be nearly ignored or surpassed for all. Cell phones (though they are tightening up some of that - excepting their silly Playstation push on the Xperias), TV, Desktops/AllinOnes, Laptops (thankfully, they have 1 truely uncontested laptop), ASIC (they fell behind and effectively gave up), cameras (excepting one slight niche in 1000usd-3000usd), consoles (seriously... lower games sold per console vs Wii, and fewer consoles sold outright vs other two), software (though FCPX may help regain users who are not casual to the point of getting Premier CS5.5).

Just IMO, of course. I know Sony is like MS, in a sense. No real leadership, but still enough raw talent pools, so it will eventually have good ideas and execution of it's own accord (bad wording, but the point still stands).

 

agree with all OP said

 

My mother is dead and I don't have a sister but thanks for the restraint. You're right, I have totally overreacted, butthead. and have a nice day!

 

People need to realize a few things. When you have Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google and Sony, at a certain point, you have a company so big in so many fields that the only way is down.


People need to understand that the expectations of Sony are very high. Sony is one of the companies that helped reshape post-war Japan. A complete nuclear disaster. This place was not like Iraq or Afghanistan. They had ruined EVERYTHING. They wiped out entire forests for a few barrels of oil in the later years. The Allied forces sat on 90% of all the worlds oil resources thanks to the British Empires vast fortunes all over the world.
Anyway. In the 50s Sony created the transistor radio. This is one of the most important inventions of the last 100 years, and it set the tone for the legacy of Sony. We all know how they drove the VHS standard(in the war against betamax), DVD, Blu-Ray. We knew the Walkman. We remember when they bought Erricsson and made phones. We also remember the failures like MiniDisc.
Things had gotten sour a while before Stinger came.



One of the reasons;

Japan was beeming in all industry. Cheap labor was pushed to Korea and China. After all why not do outsourcing?

But Sony didn't got something. What has happened to them was what happened in America's car industry in the 70s. Suddenly America's 3 top CAR manufactures were threatened by Japanese cars. Better, cheaper, more efficient.

What happened in Korea was Samsung and LG. Initially nobody companies who did bottom-of-the-barrell work for Sony, Panasonic and so on. These Korean companies just did all the labor.
But they started learning. They were doing the cheap components, and then they caught on.
Now a days, a high end sony HDTV is better quality than a Samsung, but if you take price and design into consideration, suddenly Samsung is pretty damn close. And their marketing is great. Samsung has gotten so immensely powerful because of Sony. And Samsung makes components for everything. From internals in computer technology to fan systems to washing machines.






Howard Stinger will be replaced by Kaz Hirai. I am not sure if he is the visionary leader for Sonys future. Maybe he is. But the way Playstation 3 was handled was outright dumb. They lost so much ground to Microsoft, that PS3 is effectively a loss for them. PS3 sells more machines than Xbox in Japan and Europe, but not by much, and in many cases their products are inferior to Xbox despite having much more impressive hardware, but convoluted development tools. Their online plan is wonky, the multiplatform games runs worse than on Xbox most often.

Lots of things they did was strategically bad. Kaz was the sphere of it. They made outlandish comments about how PS3 was a super computer. the 600 dollars price tag and weak game line up showed incompetence. They boosted themselves by saying that ps3 didnt need games to get people interested.

But Kaz was not a designer. He was the spokesman of playstation. The father of playstation might have been the guy with insanity.



Sony is an amazing company. If you don't believe this you are fooling yourself. Even Steve Jobs started a keynote conference once to mourn the death of one of Sonys most legendary designers. Apple had tremendous respect for them, and Apple is the most close thing to what Sony was.




In my country nobody realizes that Sony makes good laptops. Why? Because all you see in the stores are their bottom entry level plastic laptops. so you cant buy a Sony Z or a Sony SA in stores. thus people start thinking that sony laptops are not anything special.



Apple has the right idea - they have a much smaller product line up, but everything is quality. everything is high end. and even poor people like students like myself get entry level products that they can afford like the smallest macbook air or htpc or the smallest Imac or the 8gb iphone 4.

These products are not the latest, but they are still rock solid quality.

you cant say the same about a screamy Sony Vaio SE or all their TVs, headsets, entry level dvd, bluray, stereo, speakers, headsets, headphones, and so on products.



increasing the value of the brand is what needs to happen. Ask yourself - why have Apple done so good in this recession? why are people buying expenssive products like Apple when people lack money?

- Because in these times people are even more quality aware than normal. when a poor SOB buys a Macbook Pro he feels his investment will be better in the long run because his laptop wont break or feel old in 2 years, but his sony/hp/dell might!












Finally; Marketing. you can't blame everything on marketing, but it's true. Sony had insane marketing for playstation 1 and 2 back in the day, but they feld off the wagon later.

But if you look at Apple, they sell themselves. its been a long time since the iconic ipod commercials, and a long time since the "im a mac and i am a pc" commercials.

I want to believe in Sony. Obviously, the Vaio laptops like SA and Z are very important laptops. they are doing things that only they do. it frustrates that almost nobody else wants to make subnotebook laptops with powerful GPUs and good battery.

I want them to ressurrect Walkman. Walkman needs to return.

 

I would be curious to know how much Sony loses on each Z2.

Other laptops use mostly stock parts. Not the Z2. Even though the SSDs and memory modules use standard chips, they have to be custom packaged for the Z2. While that might not be too expensive if it was being done for a major manufacture's entire product line, for the miniscule production of the Z2, it's just nutz. The per-unit component costs must be through the roof. And that's without considering the R&D costs to determine the design. The top-notch 1080p panel may be used in other applications, but it's being cut to 13.1 only for the Z2. Consider the costs of the case and everything else associated with the Z2 and it's clear why even a year later there are no competitors, it makes no economic sense. That's before adding in the assorted and sundry costs for the PMD including the fiber optics.

As best as I can tell, Sony sunk a bleepload of money into the Z2, knowing up front that they would lose it, in order to lay true claim to making the coolest laptop on earth. Halo products like that are still found in the automotive industry but very rarely these days in consumer electronics.

 

Totally agree with first post.
Sony has become the old Samsung.
Their service sucks, they are rude, blame you for issues even when its not your fault and when you still have warranty.

I can only see a way down.

- Bluray failed, cost them alot of money.

- Sony tvs are basically screens made by other companies (I always bought a Sony tv because it was build by Sony, which meant quality. Well guess thats in the past) So that means also no Sony tv innovation in the future.

- The Sony ebook failed. They overpriced it way to much at release and got owned by the way cheaper Kindle. They did lower it eventually but it was allready to late.


- Home audio was never their strong point, which is still the same. Nothing changed here

- portable audio? yeah they have cheap mp3 players for a good price and with great sound quality. But when you want something nicer there isnt anything. No Ipod touch kind of devices. They had the X-series which had a nice oled screen and was pure innovation. But the software really sucked, crappy browser, no apps. And extremely expensive No real reason to prefer it over an ipod touch.
Now they finally gonna release the Z-series which is based on android, but again to late! The Z-series is nicer/better then the ipod touch and Samsung Galaxy player, but these 2 devices have a strong name and they are allready on the market. Ipod touch has nothing to prove anymore. And Samsung has a great name with the Galaxy name.
They can do it, but its gonna be hard.....

- Playstation 3 is stable now. But its to late to really make a huge profit out of it.

- PSP totally sucked. Alot of promises, nothing happened or it happened to late. PSP Vita wont help, mobile phones have replaced mobile gaming. Kids these days walk around with the latest phone models. Yeah controls suck on a touchscreen, but its portable gaming, better controls isnt that big of an issue when you're on the road. People dont want to carry a 2nd device along. And at home they have a ps3 or facebook

- Sony tablet? Again, got released wayyyy to late. Why buy a sony when you can get an ipad or galaxy tab for the same price. These are devices which have proven themselves. Or you can get an Asus tablet which are really innovative with plugin keyboard and with nice specs. Sony will fail unless they come with something innovative.

- Sony phones: Again they were to late and that hurt them bad. When they finally had an android device, it was outdated, had old android on it. They are back in business now, so they can grow but seeing devices as the Galaxy S2, well they will need something special to beat Samsung. But they dont have anything the can throw at Samsung.

-The only really positive division is their Camera division. The DSLR camera are establishing a good name with innovation and quality. People used to make fun of Sony DSLR cameras but they are now almost at the height of for example Canon cameras.
And the point and shoot digital cameras are top notch. They do dominate this market. Alot of variety, good prices, great quality. Want a cheap one? Alot of choises. Something pricier? NEX5 NEX7, HX7V, HX9V. All really awesome cameras.

- And finally the laptops. Finally a market they were great on before the others. Last few years if you wanted design, you had Apple or Sony. So if you wanted Windows you choose Sony.
Still great products but the gap they had is almost gone. Looking at the ultrabooks and samsungs G9 they really need to look out.
And as said before. Their Service used to be great, but you can feel that its going bad with the company. These days they really try to rip you off with everything.

I personally always preferred Sony but I dont game anymore so no ps3 or psp for me.
Samsung tvs are gorgeous. Samsung phones are gorgeous and great. Same for the tablets. Now samsung laptops are also great.
So Samsung for me when I need one of these devices.

The only market i would these days buy a Sony is only the camera market.
Other devices I wouldnt even consider sony anymore. I would go straight for a Samsung.
Laptops would have been an option but had bad experience with my Vaio and sony service last year so no Sony Vaios for me anymore.

Long post sorry

 

@Spiral Man
Sony pushed the BetaMax format against the VHS. And failed. You stated that Sony supported VHS; they only did so when they realised BetaMax was going belly-up.

And Samsung is where they are not just because they used to be cheap labour providers for Sony (or any Japanese company for that matter). Most foreigners won't know but Samsung was EXTREMELY developed in the local market (ie, Korea). They just didn't venture outside of that microcosm as they weren't financially capable of doing so extensively. And I understand that Japanese companies in general pushed labour into China. I don't recall them doing so into Korea, at all.

Samsung started out with the CRT TVs which did reasonably well outside of Korea. And when it came to mobiles the SGH-E800 did very well in Europe, followed by the SGH-D500 which (if memory serves correct) was the 3rd 1.3MP camera equipped phone after the SGH-P730 and Sharp's GX30. And from that point on Samsung started investing heavily in LCD technology. While Sony decided to head down the projector-technology route. Which flopped big-time.

The South Korean government at the time pretty much prevented outside companies from selling their products in the country for approx. two decades. Which resulted in some intense competition between just Korean companies, notably with Samsung and LG. This was helped with huge government investment in technological advances. Manufacturers' finances rose over time as they started selling their know-how overseas. It was a similar situation in Japan, and it still is; Japan only started allowing foreigner tech companies to start selling properly in the last half decade or so (notably Apple and their iPhone). Though compared to Korea, Japan apparently is still considered a rather closed market for foreign companies.

I don't know about Japan, but the one thing that Korea excels at over ANY COUNTRY is customer service. Especially Samsung. They'll quite literally go head over heels to satisfy the customer should any of their products go belly up or need servicing. There was a scandal involving exploding refridgerators here (leaking / explosive coolants or something related). Samsung went out of their way to contact EVERY SINGLE OWNER of said models, and offered brand new, top-of-the-line fridges for said families free of charge WITH cash compensation for any inconvenience caused. In any other country you'd just expect a recall notice (which you'd probably only find out about in the paper or maybe the news for serious cases), and a refund from the retailer you bought said item from. Manufacturers wouldn't even contact you in person.

And where does this high quality service all come from? Management. They invested in some high-quality training, and as far as a small country like Korea is concerned, word-of-mouth spread like wildfire that Samsung will make sure every customer is satisfied with their product or support should they need it, or the Samsung person dealing with the issue is sacked.

Samsung has such intense customer service here that Sony has to provide similar levels of customer support just to stay in the country. The moment they stop offering such service, word-of-mouth spreads and people'll stop buying Sony; they'll get run out of the country. That actually literally happened to Fujitsu's laptop division here after a dozen or so people complained about laptops not being repaired properly or something along those lines. Fujitsu decided to exit Korea less than 2 years after entering.

As for Samsung offering such high quality support overseas. I'm not too sure why they aren't. My experience with Samsung UK and New Zealand haven't been all too pleasant. Though I know that Samsung New Zealand sales support is now run by Koreans. They apparently do a decent job but I've yet to test them out...

Morale of the story. Customer comes first. Sony's upper ups (and other corps too for that matte) need to get that into their head. Sure product innovation is important as it attracts potential customers and existing alike. But all that is jack if you don't follow it up with proper support. You can make the most revolutionary, life-changing device the world has ever seen. It'll be worth nothing if a company has a bad track record of assisting customers, because there'll be zilch brand loyalty; nobody will buy.

 

Thinking about the Veyron?



EDIT: Great... now I'm afraid Sony will not produce an Ivy Bridge version of this, especially with new leadership comming soon.

 

Sony def. not the company they were though I still love my Z1 & Z2.

No doubt their customer service sucks, however.

I spent $3k on my Z1 and $3k on my Z2 and yet the service I get is worse than a $499 Dell...

They know our dirty little secret, however... we are easily seduced by sexy devices.

 

Perfect! Why couldn't I have thought of that? You nailed it, the reason why intelligent people purchase $3k Sony Z's : you don't make the decision with your HEAD!

 

No, you just pray you don't have to use their service. If I had to use VAIO service as often as I *have* to use Applecare, I would never buy Sony. The TT / first-gen Z did make me come close - I stayed away from Sony for, what, two years?

 

For me, 9 years. That's how bad it was. And the first time around, all I wanted to do with order the pig of an extended battery for my SuperSlim Pro (I think that's what it was called...).

 

Well...no. But it is an apt comparison.