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Sony Projects Record Losses of $6.4 Billion
redletterdave writes "Not 24 hours after Sony announced it would slash about 10,000 jobs by the end of the year, the Japanese electronics maker announced on Tuesday that it has again doubled its annual net loss to a record $6.4 billion. The new annual estimate is Sony's fourth revision of its original forecast. The company had already more than doubled its loss forecast for fiscal 2011 on April 5 to $2.9 billion, blaming floods in Thailand, poor foreign exchange rates, and a failed partnership with Samsung... Kazuo Hirai, the company's new president and CEO hired 10 days ago, will take 'painful steps' to revive Sony, and will unveil a 'revival strategy' at a Thursday press briefing."
Sony, how is that war against your customers going for you? At some point you need to wake up and realize that your customers are not your enemies, they are your boss.
Wake up Sony, you could be one of the greatest and most profitable companies on earth with a few policies changes.
I hope their losses continue to increase. Die you greedy bastards. Before you do, however, give me back my "Other OS". Not that I'm bitter or anything.
Karma is a bitch, isn't it, Sony? May you go down swiftly. I'd love nothing more after all the hostility and the recent rumours of tying PS4 games to the console with required online verification.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people.
Hopefully they'll go out of business -- and show the world what happens to you when you treat your paying customers like fools and criminals.
Naturally, all blame should go to piracy and insufficient copy protection.
When companies get big, they attract a lot of fat (such as overpaid CEOs) and the people that are actually responsible for the success have less influence. Replacing the CEO will not help, you've just exchanged one kind of cancer for another. Need I mention I'd like 500 million Yen a year for "taking responsibility" in a multi-billion-loss?
C'mon Sony, You're not trying hard enough. If you alienate a whole other group of your users, you can slash 20,000 jobs.....
Treat your customers like criminals that need to be controlled and this is what you get.
Free Market is a bitch, ain't it.
it would seem Sony boycotted themselves on the road to insolvency if they don't wake up to the realities of servicing a web-enabled market of distributed systems. Without security and data integrity, people will leave in droves, because they have no option but to put up with whatever lax security is in place this time.
Without their corporate network model, there is nothing to distinguish Sony's hardware from anyone else's except for proprietary cabling, ports, and overpriced equipment as a result. The PS/3 was the first system they ever delivered that didn't go all out to be proprietary in every way conceivable.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the standardized interconnect of digital protocols.
It stopped mattering who you bought your devices from. They all implement the standards as best they can for a price point. Show me an LCD monitor that doesn't do 1080p nowadays, whether it's embedded in a laptop, a monitor, or a television.
I'm just surprised we seem to have stopped at 1080p as a standard just when LCD manufacturing reliability got to the point where we could produce much higher resolution monitors quite easily.
High end displays all compete on lumens and black levels as well as responsiveness (refresh rate.) As technology was cross-licensed and the manufacturing facilities consolidated, what did anyone think? That brand name would really matter all that much in the long run?
People don't forget stupid marketing mistakes like insisting on reporting the Peak Power Level a Sony amplifier can handle instead of the Continuous Power Level ratings used by high-end amplifier manufacturers.
People don't forget having their credit card information stolen.
People don't forget about being without service for over a month.
People won't buy your products just for the tag line "SO, New York!"
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Then maybe after 10 years, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and start purchasing some of your products again. In the meanwhile reap what you sow.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I wouldn't wish a VAIO upon my worst enemy.
I spent more time de-crapifying VAIOs than actually prepping them for the end-user.
Sony was once a great company. I am afraid, like most big companies, they are long past their founders' vision and values. Even reviving Akio Morita might not revive the company.
Sony's decline began with purchase of a movie studio. The company that once was Betamax and Walkman (and championed fair use for the consumer!) is nomore. Since that time, has anyone purchased a solid sony consumer product that isn't laden with burdensome DRM?
Burdensome in that your own mother simply cannot find a way to fairly enjoy a paid for piece of entertainment on a product meant to display or play entertainment from Sony? "my mom isn't a criminal, so stop treating her and all your other potential customers like one"
While the media wing may not be what is losing money today, it is their Big Media stake that is ruining the electronics company.
From lost focus on developing the best HW for consumers and Spending time on things that electronics enthusiasts have come to hate them for (Rootkits, DRM, supporting MPAA/RIAA).
Being a part of the MPAA/RIAA, Sony electronics now thinks first about DRM and second about customers. So PS3 is the first device to get Cinavia, and yet it still won't play .MKV files. Making it somewhat crappy as a media player.
If Sony hadn't jumped into the media game it would have been better focused on building devices people want, there would have been no Rootkits, no membership in MPAA/RIAA. If that Sony hit hard times, we might actually be sad. But instead Sony Media/Electronics is an unfocussed anti-consumer juggernaut that we get joy seeing go down the tubes.
If rumors are true about PS4, Sony's war on consumers is going full force with zero backward compatibility and technology to block used games.
IMO they deserve to go down the drain.
Sony CEO -
"Effective immediately, Sony Industries will be shutting down our Entertainment division until such time as they can be taught never to sue another division of Sony or our customers. Ever. Our Electronics division will now be at the forefront of Sony's drive to become competitive again. We will be looking back to what made us a great company and learning from the mistakes we made from that time until today.
We will be firing anyone with an MBA degree who does not understand that short term profits and suing our customers is not a good business model.
Furthermore, we would like to apologize for fucking over our customer base these past ten years or so. We will be removing all DRM from our products as a way of apologizing and all of our electronics now come with a "Please, hack me!" symbol on them."
Yeah, we can dream - can't we?
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
He did more than being an engineer. Taking a job as a retail consumer electronics salesman showed he was passionate about customers and about understanding them.
His biggest flaw was in not arranging appropriate succession.
Profiteering at the expense of customer experience = short term gains, long term losses.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
(Adapted from the widely overused 'Footprints in the Sand' poem.)
One night I dreamed I was sitting in front of my computer next to Sony.
Many scenes of past contact with Sony products flickered across the screen.
In most scenes I noticed some form of DRM helping me managing my digital rights,
but in some there appeared to be none at all.
This bothered me because I couldn't understand why Sony wouldn't care for some of its intellectual properties.
Especially music CDs seemed to be completely unprotected. So I said to Sony,
"You promised me, that if I bought your products, you would always help me protect my digital rights.
But I have noticed that especially IP in dire need of protection, like music CDs, has had no protection at all.
Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?"
Sony replied, "The times when you didn't notice any kind of DRM, my child, is when I rootkited you."
While the media wing may not be what is losing money today, it is their Big Media stake that is ruining the electronics company.
Apple made billions and billions selling iPods. That could have been Sony instead, but their media business made sure that Sony music players couldn't play any music from Sony Media for fear there could be any illegal copying.
Sony could have made ten times more by selling tons of music players and give away all Sony music for free to their customers.