Sony welcomes the worst moment: corporate management fails

Is it the 8th consecutive year that the television business suffers losses, or is it selling television services in exchange for a 70% gain in market value?

This makes analysts and Sony very tangled. The TV business brought a huge loss of 75 billion yen (about 964 million U.S. dollars) in the fiscal year ended in March of this year. Analysts used a series of financial figures to demonstrate the "sales of television services for growth." , but for Sony, it is always difficult to cut the television business called "Without its revival, there is no Sony revival". Last week, Sony's chief information spokesperson Shiro Kamb resolutely stated: "The television business is one of our most important businesses and we never thought of giving up the business."

Just before that, Sony had just delivered a bad quarterly earnings report: Sony's total turnover was 1,494.9 billion yen, a decrease of 10% compared with the same period of last year, operating profit, revenue of 27.5 billion yen, and last year Compared with the same period, it decreased by 59%.

Affected by the decline in sales of LCD TVs, Sony lowered its full-year earnings forecast. Sony reduced the annual sales of LCD TVs from 27 million units to 22 million units, and the full-year revenue is expected to be lowered from 7.5 trillion yen to 7.2 trillion yen, and net profit from 80 billion yen to 60 billion yen. Sony attributed the reasons to the weak demand for its TV products in Europe and the United States, the decline in the prices of flat-panel TVs, and the higher exchange rate of the yen against the US dollar, which has damaged Sony's exports.

According to DisplaySearch data, last year Sony TV had a 12% share in the global market and was left behind by Samsung and LG.

Sony, aware of the seriousness of the problem, tried to save itself by reorganization. CTO, the CFO of Sony, said that the company is scheduled to finalize the restructuring of the television business by the end of this month. The changes may include the reorganization of the development, procurement and operation of the television business, and may include the formation of alliances with other companies.

“Because of the unforgettable achievements of CRT technology, Sony’s transition was slow at the beginning of LCD TV in 2000. At the same time, the weakness in the patented technology of LCD panels and related areas caused a huge loss in the era of LCD TVs. "Peng Xiandong, director of research and development of Blackcom in China, said to reporters.

Once upon a time, because of innovation, Sony had born many of the world's first, but compared with rival Apple, now Sony has gradually become conservative in terms of development concepts and technology transformation. Apple products are all lined up for night-time buyers due to full integration and excellent design, and Sony's related consumer electronics have not yet achieved this effect.

At the same time, Sony's business units are still fighting against each other. Koichiro Tsujino, who had pioneered the development of Sony's Vaio laptops, said in an interview with Reuters that Sony's problem was corporate management failure and widespread internal flaws, which undermined the previous innovation atmosphere.

It can be said that Sony, which was listed in 1958, is welcoming the worst moment in history. Sony's market value has surpassed the 100 billion US dollar mark in history, but the current market value is only 1.96 trillion yen (25 billion US dollars), which is almost half of the market value of Howard Stringer took over Sony in 2005. In comparison, its South Korean rival, Samsung, has a market value of over one hundred billion US dollars and has become the world’s largest TV and LCD panel maker.

Sony has been trying hard to regain the position of the global consumer electronics king. On the one hand, Stringer has resorted to numerous "halting" tactics such as laying off staff, reducing investment, and increasing commissioned production overseas. For example, in June this year, Sony plans to expand the OEM orders for LCD TVs to the center of Taiwan's EMS factory. Sony has sold 90% of the Nitra factory in Slovakia and the LCD TV factory in Mexico to Hon Hai. It will also hand over Hon Hai to the TV manufacturing contract that will be sold to the European market.

On the other hand, Sony tried to challenge Apple through the Apple model. On March 10th this year, Sony announced that it will split its global business into two major groups, the "Consumer Products and Services Group" and the "Professional Equipment Solutions Group." The former mainly include Sony consumer electronics and network services such as game consoles and televisions. Mobile phones, PCs, digital imaging and other products, as well as behind the network service platform, the latter include key components business, such as semiconductors, batteries and other key components. This is regarded by the outside world as its integration of accelerating the integration of hardware, content, software, and networks, as well as what Apple, its other competitor, is doing.

And 3D technology is also seen as a life-saving straw for Sony. Sony is trying to "arm" 3D technology from televisions, Blu-ray players, laptops, games and many other product lines. However, with 3D TV as an example, the content, visual safety bottlenecks, and industry standards are still not broken.

"Sony always grows bigger and stronger each time myths are shattered," Sony's former chief executive Ikeno Ito said in "The Five Mysteries of Sony's Myth." This time, if Sony can create new myths from adversity, it may still be a question mark.