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."

Comments

Sony's war on their customers

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[evilRhino]

I broke my boycott of Sony due to shipping CDs with root-kits to get a PS3 when the slim model was released. Soon after, the network was hacked, and I lost the ability to use the console without agreeing to waive my rights to sue them if they get hacked again.
Breaking my boycott was a mistake. The company is dead to me now

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[slaker]

I stopped buying Sony products when I called for an RMA on a Sony tape drive and was told that they don't support computer products unless they're specifically connected to computers running desktop versions of Windows. In response, I asked if that included displays. The phone monkey hung up on me.

Funny in retrospect but the level of unfriendliness suggested by that interaction is such that I've been looking forward to Sony's demise for a long, long time.

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Be honest now, if you break a boycott because a company releases a product you want then you were never really boycotting them in the first place, you were just trying to present your lack of interest in their products as a principled stance.

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[jedidiah]

I was never in an active "boycott Sony" mode. Although I am not sure that it mattered. That's the problem really. Sony is suffering from a great deal of indifference in general I think rather than just the rage of a few well informed nerds.

What's Sony got to offer us that would make us want to break a boycott even if we decided we were boycotting them? I think a lack of answer to that question is their real problem.

Sony? Who cares?

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[Junta]

Also, Sony has been pretty hit and miss on quality. For example, their receivers have lots of reports of inadequate thermal design and solder failures. Generally lots of cases of Sony obviously trying to cut costs and sell on reputation, and that measure has come back to erode reputation.

So we are left with a company that is making shoddy products, has a poor security record, is pretty anti-consumer in various technologies, and charging a premium on top of all of that. Sony has to do some drastic moves to stay relevant.

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[PetiePooo]

Remember Sony's heyday? When they came out the the coolest Walkman players and headphones?

They used to be a great tech company. They built things that enthusiasts loved. I still remember fondly my WM-10. It was a sad day when I dropped it and broke the headphone jack.

There are two things that I believe led them to the brink of the disaster they currently find themselves in:

1) Proprietary technology: Sony's history with proprietary technology goes back decades. A partial list:
- Betamax (VHS won even though technologically inferior)
- MD (CDs were more versatile and sounded better)
- Memory Sticks (an unneeded but pricy competitor to SD, CF, etc.)
- Bluray (I still wish HD-DVD had won that war).

IBM learned their lesson about proprietary commodity hardware when their PS/2 attempt tanked.

2) Purchase of Columbia Pictures (1989): With this purchase, their media arm became the tail that wagged the dog, and it continued with their purchase of BMG. They forgot about enabling their customers with technology, and used their technology to inhibit their customers instead, all in the name of protecting their media. This led them to blunders such as their use of XCP and MediaMax rootkits They still haven't learned their lesson, as it continues with BD+

Several cable companies are falling into this same trap. When a single entity owns both the media and the distribution channel, consumer trust evaporates as the entity inevitably tries to tie the two into a monopoly.

When will it end? And can we as consumers ever trust them again?

I seriously doubt it. I haven't bought any Sony gear for nearly a decade, and I don't think I'm the only one.

RIP, Sony - 1946 - 201x

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, I'm certainly not going to argue that generating bad PR(along with genuine reductions in the quality delta between Sony and once-inferior competitor brands) has done anything but hurt the company, nor has their NIH approach helped them reduce either their own costs or the customer's total-cost-of-buying-a-sony-thing.

My point is just that, division by division, Sony's departments of Evil are doing alright, while Sony's departments of overpriced-but-not-actually-luxury are getting absolutely hammered. Barring some sort of benevolent visionary, it seems likely that the more-or-less-neutral stuff is going to get 'rightsized' and cut back, while the evil will wax yet fouler.

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[OglinTatas]

The company is dead to me now

I have no sony!
* rips garment *

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[ByOhTek]

My boycott started when I had a notebook from them with a finicky touch pad and a power button that slid under the case occasionally, causing it to power cycle until you unwedged it.

I sent it in, they told me it was water damage on the motherboard, and it would cost $1350 to replace it (it was a $1200 notebook). I was very careful to avoid water on that thing.

I said no, they sent it back, and it wouldn't even power on, and the indicator lights didn't light up when I plugged it in. I'm guessing they just didn't bother reconnecting anything after disassembly, but the way the case was set up, even after unscrewing it, you still needed some special tool to open it up, which I couldn't find.

Turns out I wasn't the only one I knew with a similar story... I too look forward to their demise from the world of electronics, and their war on the people who pay them money for their goods and supposedly "services" but in practice "disservices".

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[JWW]

What's the downside again?

D fucking R fucking M....

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[Anonymous Coward]

True story: I was once drinking in a bar (I live in Tokyo) and was introduced to the businessman sitting next to me. He said he worked for SCE. Then he said "Please buy a PSP Go". I (being a bit drunk) replied with a slightly-too-direct "No, they're shit". He answered "Yeah, I know, lol".

But it got even funnier from there. I asked him if he knew Kaz Hirai, and he said "Yeah, I work with him, and I see him on a daily basis."
Then he said "Tell me, do you know about RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRRRRRRRR?"
After I'd stopped laughing, I was like "Of course... and 599 US DOLLARS etc."
Then he told me that apparently Kaz is known as "Kaz 'RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRRRRRRRR' Hirai" inside SCE Japan.

This all ACTUALLY HAPPENED, and I still have the guy's business card right here.

Re:Sony's war on their customers

[Gr8Apes]

Boycott? I just started choosing the better product circa 1990. Then when they started doing stupid crap like the memory sticks, rootkits,BD "win" purchase, I chose in each case to buy a standard product, which wound up never being a Sony product, until the last couple of issues, in which I actively make sure I don't support Sony in any way possible, going as far as to recommend anything but Sony even when someone asks about a Sony product, usually by saying, "Well, have you seen product x by y? It does all that, and this extra thing, costs half, and the warranty is twice as long and customer satisfaction ratings are 20% higher" and in 99% of the cases, all of those statements are true,

Sony is one of a few companies that deserves to die in their current incarnations, and it appears that their business practices are reaping just rewards.

Schadenfreudelicious!

[benjfowler]

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.

I knew they should have added more DRM!

[vovick]

Naturally, all blame should go to piracy and insufficient copy protection.

Big Enough To Fail

[Kdansky]

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?

It's kind of ironic...

[msobkow]

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!"

Some hints:

[dargaud]

• Don't put rootkits on my computers
• Don't sell crappy products and then refuse to honor the warranty when they break after 2 weeks.
• Don't sponsor criminal organizations like RIAA/MPAA
• Don't use parts that only _you_ make, such as special batteries and special memory 'sticks'

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.

Re:It's called 'VAIO'

[CimmerianX]

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.

Problems stem from trying to be a media company.

[guidryp]

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.

This should be their "announcement" -

[fallen1]

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?