Amidst shifting consumer preferences and intensifying competition, including that from even non-traditional rivals like Apple Computer, the Japanese electronics major is finding it hard to regain its lost glory.
For
Sonythe world's leading electronics and media behemoth and
the makers of the popular Walkman brand of portable music
playerthese are not pleasant times. The company reported a
loss of $569 mn for the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2006,
which just indicated the electronics giant's ongoing struggle
to resurrect itself, as its core electronics business continues
to be its weak spot. In fact, for the fiscal year 2005-06
too the situation was not better either, as profits came down
sharply by about 25%, led by sluggish sales in the electronics
segment, owing to poor sales of CRT and LCD TVs, as demand
shifted to flat panel and plasma televisions, where the firm
is lagging behind its rivals. Surely, this will not give much
comfort to the firm's new CEO, who is also its first non-Japanese
in its history, Sir Howard Stringer, who after assuming power
in June 2005, unveiled a series of measures, last September,
to fix its woes. Yet, as the recent performances suggest,
the Japanese electronics major is bit too far off from reaching
the ambitious target set to be achieved by the end of FY07.
For
millions of Walkman lovers across the globe it might be just
shocking to see that Sony, which began its journey in 1946,
after the World War II, in a bombed-out building in Tokyo,
and which once ruled the roost at global electronics arena,
has to now struggle to regain its lost glory. However, before
hitting the hard times, the firm in its glory days, in the
next 60 years, it emerged as one of the most complex and gigantic
media and electronics conglomerates in the world. Its product
portfolio became highly diversified with the firm's interest
spanning across areas like audio and video equipment, televisions,
computers and computer peripherals, telecommunication equipment,
semiconductors, and electronic components. It later entered
game and music software, movies, and even insurance business.
Its other interests include a 50% stake in Sony BMG Music
Entertainment, the second-largest record company in the world.
The Japanese giant has been celebrated for product innovation
chiefly in the hardware segment as well as successful commercial
marketing of the products. It built Japan's first tape recorder
called Type-G. It also was the first company to ship its first
commercially successful transistor radios in the market. Indeed,
the firm for long dominated the electronics market through
transistor radios in the 1950s, Triniton TVs in the 1960s
and, in the 1970s, through the revolutionary Walkman. |
