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Sony To Cut About 10K Jobs
Pichu0102 writes "Reported by the Washington Post, Sony says it will cut about 7% of its jobs as well as sell about $1 billion of it's assets. It also will declare a loss for this year." From the article: "To help boost efficiency, Sony said it has abolished the company system that Stringer said was preventing different business units from communicating freely, causing overlap in development and missed opportunities in the market. The electronics group will be reorganized to place centralized decision-making over key business areas under Ryoji Chubachi, who became Sony's new president and electronics CEO in a major overhaul of management in June." Another reorg on the heels of Microsoft's decision from earlier this week.
Sony said it has abolished the company system that Stringer said was preventing different business units from communicating freely...
Sony is going Open Source???
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Hmm... something about this sounds fishy. Outsourcing, PS2 and other suches do not sound like "a loss for this year". Sony should be booming, considering. Perhaps it's a marketing technique? We'll soon see.
I feel for the people losing their jobs... Will the be compatible with other companies?
-FL
That Sony electronics will have greater control over their products?
My understanding may be flawed, but it seemed that the Electronics division was having problems with the Entertainment division sticking their nose in and making life difficult. Instead of having an MP3 player, they had ATRAC players that would convert your MP3's for you. It was only after the first release tanked they brought out a new line that would natively play MP3, ATRAC, and (I think) AAC.
If the Electronic division is allowed to flourish and tell Entertainment to mind its own business, they will probably stand a greater chance to make products that people want, instead of want the Entertainment division wants to control.
Of course, this is all just my opinion - I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The recording side of Sony had no trouble communicating to the MP3 player side the fact that they should do what they can to restrict users from copying songs freely. Stupid things like forcing users to convert from MP3 to ARTAC and limiting them from copying a song more than 3 times (which was easy enough to circumvent) still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth 5 years since I received a Sony "MP3" player for Christmas that at the time was worth $300.
In a stunning move to increase its literacy level to the grade 3 level, Slashdot editors announced that they will eventually learn the difference between ITS and IT'S. Although no time table was given, pundits think that 15 years from now, a Library of Congress full of Beowulf clusters of unused apostrophes might accumulate because of this.
This is just the first byproducts of the management shakesups that happened in Sony at the beginning of this year (new CEO, recognition the company was poorly coordinated, etc). It has nothing to do with Microsoft.
This is what happens when one half of your company is fighting with (and suing) the other half: either decide to sell music and movies, decide to sell mp3 and DVD burners, or find something other than an arms race to struggle to create/defeat unbreakable protection schemes.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Sony needs to separate its hardware and entertainment division. This has been the major cause of their lack of focus and therefore lack profitability. FTA it seems its competitors are only in hardware.
Maybe Stringer is (slowly) turning it into a pure hardware company.
Yeah, I remember when I stopped buying Sony products. Probably about 6 years ago today. My guess is that is probably when their troubles started.
.. not the rule).
Sony has this nack for being extremely hard-headed. They stuck to their Beta machines, and missed the entire VCR explosion; they stuck to minidisc and DPMS (copy prevention tech) and refused to even license the technology for the longest time. Copying from minidisc has always been severely hobbled.
Sony Trinitron was the $hit for many years. Except when they got ridicously over priced.
Then Sony missed the whole MP3 bandwagon, instead pushing their ATRAC DPMS enabled system -- which nobody wanted (sounds like Beta all over again).
Memory Stick -- another locked down format from Sony.
Turns out Copy protection schemes just don't sell very well (exception: IPod
m
Pretty much every music device that Sony released was crippled in one way or another. I loved the MD format, long battery life, and the ability to store the equivalent of 128Mb of MP3s on a $2 disk. But all of Sony's MD, CD and flash players would only play ATRAC (or a variation thereof). This would not have been a problem if ATRAC were an open standard.
But converting MP3s or CDs to ATRAC required Sony's drivers and software (which never worked in Linux). This HAS to be the buggiest and most DRM ridden software I ever used. I was so frustrated with it that when I got a free 128Mb RCA Lyra MP3 player, I just sold my MD player and the 50-ish MDs that I had (40 of them blank, because I couldn't bring myself to record them all).
Sony may have added support for other formats recently, but I got burnt once with their MDs. Unless they offer compelling new features over their competition, I don't see a reason I'd ever consider another Sony product.
Call it the iPod effect - Sony's stockholders were not too pleased to see the people who brought you the Walkman get smacked around by the fucking iPod.
My group found that Sony's division conflicts were ruining Sony's strategic opportunities. A simple example is Sony's music division prohibiting Sony's electronics divsion from building DRM-free MP3 players.
A more complex example is Sony's movie division failing to work with with Sony's games division-- thus we get the PSP that can play movies, but there's no Sony "iMovies" store ready. What a strategic goof!
Our strategic management recommendation was for Sony to bring in new leadership, specifically someone to rock the boat and get the divisions working together.
Sony made it as a television manufacturing company. They never completely understood other businesses. Their shotgun approach at trying other products occasionaly got lucky and often were complete failures alienating some customers. I've been burned so many times by Sony gizmo failures that I gave up on them.
Sony has forgotten about the rigourous quaility control and innovation that made them a manufacturing giant. Like many big technology companies, they have been taken over by marketeers and accountants.
The visionless have replaced the visionaries and Sony remains a cautionary tail for companies and nations that abondon mercantilist precsion for globalist rhetoric.
Of course, laying off staff won't actually increase sales. Decrease costs? Yes.
which is bound to make them a large amount of revenueRevenue and profit are very different beasts, too.
Believe me...I know these things. After all, I used to work for JDS Uniphase.
Thank you.
:(
Especially since that error showed up in two consecutive sentences.
I'm starting to lose hope that people will ever use it correctly...
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
They think the average consumer will buy more of their products knowing they are laying off staff.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
It's the iPod's doing. Crufty Apple Computer has taught Sony a thing or two with this toy.
the new Sony Walkman: "Please clean out your desk and walk, man."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ant they are supposed to do what?
Declare bankruptcy and "take it out on their employees" allowing the creditors to acquire "and continue to push their doomed technology".
Either way the employees would be out of work.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
10K hex : 65,536
or
10K binary: 10,240 ?? ( I just hate my Sony car CD player-- no way I see to turn off the barber-pole advertising-- front-panel eject button too easy to hit-- other buttons too hard to hit-- and it often thinks it has a CD in it when it doesnt-- yechhh! )
Sony has been on a downward slide for quite some time. If they could just get over their "not invented here" mentality and not try to reinvent the wheel every time a new technology comes along. There is nothing wrong with taking something good and simply making it better and more compelling. If Sony made cars it would have square wheels and they would convince you that it was much better that way since you didn't need brakes anymore which by the way were also not invented at Sony.
For example, Sony used to have something like five different divisions which developed and marketed video cameras. This kind of effect is going to arise sooner or later in any large organization, but a bit of refactoring and consolidation now and then has to be a good thing.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
I doubt it, Their content side is pretty profitable, the Music and Video is doing fine and so are the Games groups.
Much of the core jobs they will be killing off will be in the dead end lines like PS2 and PS3. Sony is getting away from console games and right into implant based ones.
A small surgical procedure and you get both full sensory control of your game space and feeding tube with an optional caffine drip right into your blood stream.
Who needs Heroin when you got SimStim?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
wtf man?
how would saying "WERE FUCKED!!!!" save those jobs ?? instead of going bankrupt they reorganize like they fucking should, at least then not all of their employees end up unemployed.
(oh and parts of this whole thing would be to prevent overlapping, like pda/computers vs. psp)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just another large conglomerate tightening up their balance sheets by firing employees they'll hire back over the next year at a fraction of the salary, perhaps by hiring them from "temp" companies.
/.er would feel sympathy for one of the RIAA's biggest supporters. Remember, this is also the same Sony that thinks you should be locked into proprietary formats (ATRAC, Memory Stick, MD, Beta, whatever).
I can't see how any
I personally can't think of a single Sony item I own, either. They can fire all their employees and sink their Board of Directors in the Marianas Trench and I wouldn't care. In fact, they can sink all their "artists" over at the music division and make the world a better place.
It seems to make sense disposing of duplicated functionality in the work force. interesting that it took the appointment of a non-japanese CEO i.e. a Scot to implement it.
The thing is Sony gets a lot of support in Japan for these formats. It's like Americans buying American cars. They're probably more than a little blinded by the success at home and need a central power structure who can look outward and realize the future lies in open standards for the whole world, packaged in the nicest possible way. They can take a lesson from Apple.
a major overhaul of management in June
Should be read as "bonuses for management, layoffs for everyone else".
I haven't read Howard's announcement in detail yet, but my first impression is pretty good. Several years ago, I worked for Sony Corporation of America (for a while there, Howard was my boss's boss). Getting the different operating companies to work together for the good of the larger corporation was extremely difficult. Management for each operating company was compensated based on the performance of that individual operating company. Music execs got paid well when they sold lots of music. This went down to a fairly fine grain - Sony Classical was extremely happy to have the soundtrack to "Titanic" on their label. There was no motivation for the music company to do something to benefit the electronics company, and vice-versa. The Playstation company was making so much money, they went off and did their own thing entirely.
Eliminating the barriers between the operating companies will be a painful transition, but all in all, probably a good thing.
I'm not particularly in favor of eliminating jobs, though 7% over half a year isn't much - most of that is probably natural attrition. When Sony cut jobs while I was there, it was all attrition, and I think it was 4 or 5%.
The market doesn't seem to like it - Sony is down about 100 yen against a share price of 4000ish since the announcement, but the market may have been expecting something more dramatic. Anyway, my initial $0.02.... ObDisclaimer - I haven't worked there for years, I don't consult for them, and I don't own their stock.
-----
Klactovedestene!
(Isn't that Sony's comment about everything these days? "We've managed to sell ten UMD disks to the five people who bought PSPs! That's 200% market penetration!", "We've sold more UMD copies of last year's blockbuster than the poorest selling DVD sold when DVDs came out! Therefore they're successful!", "Three new people have bought PSPs! This proves UMDs are taking off!", "We've had to sell the Vaio line to Amstrad, because otherwise we just wouldn't have the production resources to make the sell-out UMD systems!", "People aren't buying mini-discs any more. Isn't it obvious? They want UMDs instead!", "We just had a bunch of UMDs returned! This means people are going out there and buying them!")
In all seriousness, this sucks if you're working for Sony, and I hope the poor bastards directly affected by this are able to find work quickly.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No no, you've misunderstood. This is from the IT section of slashdot. Sony is cutting 7% of the jobs belonging to IT. it's jobs. I'm sure that's what they meant.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
My group found that Sony's division conflicts were ruining Sony's strategic opportunities. A simple example is Sony's music division prohibiting Sony's electronics divsion from building DRM-free MP3 players.
Oh for pull down menus...
My group found that (Sony/ATT/Digital Equipment Corporation/Ford/The White House)'s division conflicts were ruining (Sony/ATT/Digital Equipment Corporation/Ford/The White House)'s strategic opportunities.A simple example is (Sony/ATT/Digital Equipment Corporation/Ford/The White House)'s (music/longlines/ VMS/SUV/Turdblossom) division prohibiting (Sony/ATT/Digital Equipment Corporation/Ford/The White House)'s (electronics/wireless/UNIX/Hybrid/Moderate) divsion from building (DRM-free MP3 players/profit/cheaper boxen/fuel efficient cars/bigger tents).
Verizon: Latin for "poor rural service".
Kudos to you, Urusai! *bows politely*
Arr, it'll be the plank for those scalawags! Methinks, they'll be doing their "corporate synergy activities" and singing from the depths of Davy Jones' locker, yarr!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
accoriding to paul graham, big companies can't do product development.
Sony is willing to risk jobs and billions of dollars in favor of having control (and royalties) over the Blu-Ray/BetamaxDisc medium instead of going for another open-forum standard like the original DVD was.
And regarding the PSP, that was just an obvious and total failure. I'm sure there's like 5 or 6 Slashdotters who enjoy their limited run 1.5 BIOS PSP running illegal emulators in stretched resolution (all of which can be done easier and better on the GPX2, besides the fact that all future PSP's cannot be hacked and will require BIOS updates for future games if they do get hacked), but the PSP is a general failure.
Then there's the PS3, well, the costs involved there speak for itself...
Also lets not forget that Sony is the head of *both* of Slashdotters' favorite two orgainaizations: the RIAA and the MPAA.
I hope it is true and that their entertainment division will continue to hemorrhage, ultimately going where they deserve...out of business. One less criminal organisation in the world.
Try:
1) 23 2) IT professional and graduate student 3) Better at making preditions than you, apperently.
Son, the DVD and the new HD-DVD are not any more open-forum standards than Blu-ray. There are patents covering every aspect of the DVD and HD-DVD specs, just like Blu-ray, and someone gets paid for every DVD in your collection. What is wrong with Sony wanting to be that someone? (Especially when they have the better technology.)
I don't want to rub it in, but it's somehow fun to see Sony having money problem while all the Sony fanboys keep claiming "Nintendo is going down" or "They should stop making consoles" or "The GC is a total failure, Sony p0wned them" or "The PSP is such a success, Nintendo should stop trying".
There used to be a time when Sony could afford to sell its consoles at a loss and make it up with profits from other parts of the company, but methinks they will have to put a pretty high pricetag on the PS3 if they can't afford to lose money on the hardware anymore.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Sony is teh Doomed!
:)
Oh, sorry, I forgot. This only happens if -Nintendo- posts a loss.
hackshop.com - My tech hobby project hub
Ever since I invested heavily in MD equipment first introduced by SONY, willingly paying the bleeding edge tax for what I thought was cool technology, and ever since Sony kept a white-knuckled grip on the control and licensing of that technology, effectively keeping the price sky high, and effectively killing it as a potential great medium, and effectively rendering my speculative investment worthless, I've avoided them like the plague.
Sony is very close to being the Microsoft of the electronics industry, except they haven't managed to garner the same dominant position (percentage-wise) in the electronics market as Microsoft has in the OS/software market. But, they keep trying with heavy-handed business practices, sky high (artificially) pricing, and proprietary non-interoperable (think memory sticks, "mp3" (heh) players, etc.) gadgets.
Maybe this shakeup can bring a change in attitude, a change in latitude, to their approach. I doubt it. But I can hope.
Seriously, 'editors', I'll copy-edit this stuff for you for nothing, or you can continue to be scoffed at by third graders. Your choice.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
With DVD's, the DVD Consortium makes a profit (this consists of Toshiba, Panasonic/Matsushita, Sony and a bunch of others). Lots of companies make money on the DVD. With Blu-Ray, Sony wants to hog all of the profits for themselves. The market calls for another consortium with not just one company controlling the medium. One would have thought Betamax would have taught them a lesson, cuz they were better than VHS technically anyway.
Considering that despite the lesser storage capacity, the HD-DVD seems to have better DRM and scratch-resistance than the Blu-Ray, I don't see how Blu-Ray is necesarily "better". Plus Blu-Ray players have been announced to need to connect to some kind of servers to activate otherwise they "punish" you, as well as having self-destruct codes.
They just can't admit that their PSP was a failure and that Blu-Ray (aka BetamaxDisc) and the PlayStation3 are going to bankrupt them.
/rant
Wow, that's either an exaggeration or amazingly naive. If you honestly believe that the PSP, Blu-Ray and the PS3 are going to bankrupt a company with 151,000 employees and about a gajillion patents, a company that rakes in about $70billion a year in revenue, then you seriously need to stop smoking the reefer and pay attention in summer school.
Companies of Sony's size don't 'break' over one generation of marketing mistakes. The problem is much larger than a couple of wrong turns with products. Such a thing is achieved through the "head against a brick wall" method. Be stubborn enough to keep making the same mistakes and eventually they'll go broke.
If Sony ever goes bankrupt, it'll be because five or ten years from now, they're still climbing over each other, fisting big sweaty handfuls of dollars up the asses of their lawyers trying to revive the dead horse carcass they call a music business model that's been lying on the sidewalk for the past six years. If they'd spent a quarter of what they've already spent on their RIAA/MPAA legal bills on a decent online business infrastructure, they'd be raking in more money than iTunes.
Imagine that; 1999 and Sony releases SonySongStore.com - any songs by any Sony recording artist for $1, any album for $12 - they'd have forced Universal, EMI and Warner to all open their own websites to give their own artists a piece of the online pie. Then they wouldn't have to care so much about trying to force what *they* think is popular music onto the public. Instead, they could promote three times as many new artists for cents on the dollar using online advertising and, well you know, let the market sort the wheat from the chaff. No more need to sign huge, long term contracts with new, unknown artists, creating risky investments. Instead, sign them on so as they can provide their songs for download on your site, pay for minimal bandwidth costs if they go bust or end up raking it in because a shitload of people have downloaded their songs, realized they're actually talented and you've got yourselves a star.
Not to mention that if they'd done all of this six years ago, I guarantee you Sony would have brought out their own MP3 player years before Apple did and it would have become the benchmark. It would have essentially become the Walkman/Discman of the current generation. Instead, they're constantly trying to play catch-up, wondering why they can't keep up whilst simultaneously refusing to let go of the starting post.
Easier said than done, I know. But regardless my original point remains valid; If Sony ever goes bankrupt, it will be because they're still continuing with this DRM/RIAA/MPAA death spiral of a charade two or three CEOs from now. It's worse than they think because it's not just a error of judgement that's affecting their entertainment section; it's filtering across to their R&D department (taking a couple of years to finally release a decent MP3 player that, you know, actually plays MP3s), their marketing department ("Trust us when we say you'd rather have your songs in ATRAC format") and until someone towards the pointy end of the pyramid decides to say, "Uhh, hey guys I think we're on the wrong track here", they're going to continue to get screwed with their pants on.
Sorry heh,
Actually Sony Computer Entertainment consists of about 10% - 30% of Sony's overall sales.
A lot of "if's" and "would have's" this is why Sony lost a shitload of money. Maybe they should have listened to consumers like you, but instead they put their market share control as priority #1. This is probably why they're #2 to Panasonic/Matsushita in terms of their mother industry, consumer electronics.
And regarding the PSP, that was just an obvious and total failure.
No.
Just, No.
Though I do believe that Nintendo will ultimately continue to dominate the handheld console market, there's no denying that Sony has really given them a run for their money. Nobody has ever been able to do that in the market before -- not Sega, not Atari, not Tiger, not whomever it is that makes the GPX2, whatever that is.
As soon as their next-generation Lean Mean Creativity-Reducing Gaming Machine comes out, they'll soar to the top among sequals and remakes and over-bloated polygon counts.
Actually, Matsushita is larger because of many, many reasons, the chief reason being that it was founded 28 years before Sony was.
;)
Although it wasn't one of the Big Four zaibatsus, it was also dissolved after the Allied occupation of Japan and targeted for systematic breakup, however was saved by worker/family union petitions and thus is a much, much more significant staple of the Japanese economic landscape.
You might be an IT professional and graduate student, but I'm also an IT professional, Wharton School graduate and majored in Japanese Business and Economics
instead of going bankrupt they reorganize like they fucking should, at least then not all of their employees end up unemployed.
Because they will still go bankrupt in long term. Layoffs only give short term benefits because employees appear to be the most exspensive item in the budget. However, those employees were obviously doing something to benefit the company unless they were sitting around doing nothing and if they were that piss poor organized to begin with and that's more of an upper managment issue for not firing the people a long time ago on an individual basis and won't matter how many people they layoff unless they take people off the top.
If you fire off all your manpower and brainpower then you start to have lost productivity, lost sales, and lost innovation by the overworked people left over. It's like keeping from starving to death on a deserted island by cutting off you foot and eating it. Sure... It will keep you alive for a bit, but if you need to chase after wild animals for food then you are pretty much screwed.
Companies would be better to cancel projects and streamline spending and have individual firings as laying off peopel based off poor performance and lack of value to the company rather than picking a section of the company and giving them the axe with no rhyme or reason.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I thought that Blu-Ray had better scratch resistance, because it was getting some 22nd century coating that was very hard to scratch. That allowed the disks to be thinner. Is that not correct?
I dont care what Sony says, this is so they can help ease the loss of money when they sell a PS3. It makes perfect sense, we hear about how Sony could stand to lose billions selling PS3 at a loss, whats an easy way to make up some of that money? Fire people.
Finally I'll be able to play The Matrix on the matrix.
KFG
Would this be the first Wookie ever to head a major corporation?
Alas, they killed their PDA a couple years ago.
The cake is a pie
...said "Take a Walk man".
Anybody want a peanut?
In this case it's like iPod is blue and Sony's on Red, only Sony forgot to grab the rocket launchers or vehicles.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think he mentioned 30 min pizza delivery but that would be wise of him not to. [wink wink]
However he's pretty much right, the US leads in content sales. Anime is big only in Japan and amongst angst ridden teens who don't like being goths. Bollywood movies are big in India, but only their highest income flicks barely match up to a mediocre Hollywood dud like Bewitched or Willy Wonka. Name five big draw band/singers from outside the US.
The USA is where the money is for content. Sony has a lock on it, and the rest is gravy. Monitors, computers, console game systems are nice, but too many players in the game. Too easy to build it in Taiwan and rock the market here. Once somebody makes a cross platform console then most of the makers will die a fiery death.
EA and Microsoft are praying for it.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Redundant? It was a joke. Maybe off topic or something, but redundant?
Meh.
I don't have a link handy (google for "MP3 licensing"; the fraunhof (sp?) company has a web site explaining it all), but the deal is that this is covered by a patent, not copyright. So it's not illegal per se to use LAME, but it's illegal to use it without paying a license fee to that company.
So if you wanted to build and sell an MP3 player, you could use whatever MP3 decoder you wanted to (open-source or otherwise), but you'd still have to pay the same license fee to the patent holder. If you used a closed-source decoder, you'd probably have to pay an additional license fee to the company that owns it, which is separate from the patent license fee.
BTW, you wouldn't use LAME for an MP3 player since LAME is an MP3 encoder, not decoder.
"If you fire off all your manpower and brainpower then you start to have lost productivity, lost sales, and lost innovation by the overworked people left over. It's like keeping from starving to death on a deserted island by cutting off you foot and eating it. Sure... It will keep you alive for a bit, but if you need to chase after wild animals for food then you are pretty much screwed."
I used to work for adaptec and this is exactly what they did (see where they are now) the last thing i heard from the few unlucky souls who work there, is that they sold off there engineering and are now contacting their engineering out...