Sony didn't just 'miss the boat', they did what they could to sink it and damage their brand.
Before they had a fantastic reputation, their audio equipment was good to excellent for a small fraction of the price of the competition.
Rootkits, lawsuits and me-too products seems to be what they specialize in nowadays.
Toshiba, Fujitsu, Matsushita and many others (also in other branches than just electronics, for instance Toyota and Honda) have done a lot better and definitely didn't aim the shotgun at their own feet.
Another thing that hit Japan was that they were no longer able to compete on price with China and Korea.
> Rootkits, lawsuits and me-too products seems to be what they specialize in nowadays.
Didn't wait for that. The issue with Sony is that they're historically utterly incompetent on the software side of things. I swore off Sony products after getting a NetMD. The software for that POS was so absolutely terrible it makes iTunes look good, snappy and user-friendly.
That 'shoot yourself in the foot' strategy is exactly what you get when you put old school hardware guys in charge of software. Sony had years and years of success with proprietary connectors, batteries and exclusive content deals. Consumers don't really like it but they quietly tolerate it if it means getting the newest features. Put those guys in charge of your software strategy and lawsuits and rootkits is exactly what you'll get.
Also keep in mind that the rootkit came out of the 50-50 joint venture Sony BMG and was the brainchild of Bertelsmann as well. The guy who went on-air to defend the decision saying effectively 'if you don't know about it, why should you care?' was in charge of that division and originally from the Bertelsmann side. The old-school publishing industry has almost the exact same relationship with software.
I remember Sony for things like TA3650, the Walkman and their (excellent) reel-to-reel recorders. By the time they got into media (and don't forget betamax) they'd already lost their spirit, even though financially they had not yet peaked.
I think we agree. You remember Sony for things which have no software component. The only software Sony was very good at was embedded software. I still have an original AIBO which sort of exemplifies that.
I just realized that from my window here in Tokyo I can see and recognize the tops of 2 large buildings: NTT (Japanese hardware) and Oracle Japan (foreign software). This is why I was so encouraged by the large acquisition of a foreign software company by Recruit this past week.
Before they had a fantastic reputation, their audio equipment was good to excellent for a small fraction of the price of the competition.
Rootkits, lawsuits and me-too products seems to be what they specialize in nowadays.
Toshiba, Fujitsu, Matsushita and many others (also in other branches than just electronics, for instance Toyota and Honda) have done a lot better and definitely didn't aim the shotgun at their own feet.
Another thing that hit Japan was that they were no longer able to compete on price with China and Korea.