As Goes Kodak So Goes SONY?

Hard to believe.

Hard to believe but true.

Sony, the company that brought us The Walkman, The Trinitron, Betacams and a whole lot of other great stuff could be on its way out… of business.

An article in today’s New York Times puts none too fine a point on it:

“It’s almost game over at Sony,” said Yoshiaki Sakito, a former Sony executive who has worked for Walt Disney, Bain & Company, Apple and a start-up focused on innovation training. “I don’t see how Sony’s going to bounce back now.”

That it could be ‘game over’ for Sony is difficult for those of us who grew up with the brand to believe.

But it seems to be true.

Last year, SONY lost a mind-boggling $6.4 billion.

You can’t keep doing that for too long.

Sony’s market cap is now 1/9th of Samsung’s and an astonishing 1/30th of Apple.

What makes this even weirder is that only a few years ago (2003), SONY wascontemplating buying Apple, but passed.

That was but one of many mistakes that the former electronics giant made along the way.

SONY could have, should have, been the company to put together the iPod and iTunes – they had the technical know-how and they had owned the music company. But they couldn’t get it together.

Tragic.

Many years ago, Mr. idei, then Chairman of SONY brought me to Tokyo to meet with him and talk to the team.  We were just starting VNI and we were the first to use SONY Hi-8 cameras for broadcast at NY1.  Idei was delighted.  He took me on a tour of the SONY facility in Tokyo. He didn’t wear a suit, even though he was Chairman – he wore an engineer’s grey smock.

About a half hour into the tour, he brought me into a very quiet room.  At the center of the room, there was a piece of technical gear on a kind of small podium, lit by a spotlight above it.  It had a set of headphones connected to it.  He told me to put on the headphones and hit ‘play’.  Great music poured out.  Then (and remember, this was just when CDs were starting to replace records), he took out a pair of tweezers and extracted a small chip.

“Digital solid state”, he said with great pride. “No moving parts. 2 hours of music. Digital”.

That was 1992.

Impressive!

Well, what the hell happened?

The Times article lays out a lot of possiblities.  I am sure there will be other who will do a post-mortem on SONY.

Too bad.

But there is a great quote from Andy Grove, the former Chairman and CEO of INTEL:

“Listen to the technology. The technology will tell you what to do”.

Clearly, this is something SONY did not do.

Once they were on the cutting edge of technology.

Now, they are likely to be the next AOL or Yahoo.

Nothing lasts forever.

 

Michael Rosenblum

For more than 30 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital video journalism revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for video literacy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State's Government's broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the VJ paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on this paradigm (1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996). Other clients include Spectrum News, Verizon and CBS News.