# How The Tech Parade Passed Sony By



## Derrel (Apr 18, 2012)

Did anybody happen to see this recent article in the New York Times? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/t...ind-in-the-tech-parade.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1

Sony has a new CEO, who is now faced with directing a corporation that has lost money for four straight years. Will he be able to find something, anything, that Sony can transform into a "hit"? Will he be able to get Sony engineers to actually create a decent camera for once? I was reading the Luminous Landscape's review of the Sony NEX-7; after six solid months of using it basically daily, Michael Reichmann had nothing good to say about the camera's menu and controls. Apparently the custom menus are a total disaster, and the camera has a state of the art APS-C sensor (24 MP!), but it suffers from having zero custom control parameter sets, so when one wishes to re-configure the camera, one must re-set each and every shooting parameter one at a time...Ugh!

My impression of the Sony NEX-7 camera after reading Reichmann's 6,000-frame, six month review? Good hardware + crappy software = sub-standard user experience. This is what The New York Times refers to as the way Sony has not been able to "nail" a single,solitary product in years...

I do not want Sony to fail, but Sony has lost a huge amount of ground to Samsung Electronics. I want to see them compete,and to offer some good products that have the bugs worked out before they are sold.


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## kassad (Apr 18, 2012)

Damn pay wall.

Oddly I hit a pay wall when I use your link, but not when I use the link in the LL review.

How do you think this will effect Nikon?


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## Forkie (Apr 18, 2012)

I can't read the link without registering and I can't be bothered, but I don't think Sony have a made a good product for years (apart from maybe, the PS3!).  I usually avoid them when buying electronics because they are steadily becoming a jack of all trades, master of none.  They seem to have been focussing far more on volume and variety than quality for some time now.

If they're not careful, they'll fall into the bargain bin along with the Goodmans, Aiwas, Sharps and Toshibas.


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## manaheim (Apr 18, 2012)

I want Sony to fail.  The company has been asking for failure (not to mention asking for being shunned by their customers) for so many years now it galls me to see that they're still alive.


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## Forkie (Apr 18, 2012)

manaheim said:


> I want Sony to fail.



Except for the Nikon sensor department


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## cgipson1 (Apr 18, 2012)

I have never cared for Sony's business practices.... and would love to see them shake it up, and get on track. At least if they go under, they will have to sell off the few successful part's of thier business (like the sensor manufacturing)!


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## nmoody (Apr 18, 2012)

With all their blunders in the video game industry the past few years, I have just about written them off.

Can't think of the last time I actually purchased a Sony product.


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## rexbobcat (Apr 18, 2012)

nmoody said:
			
		

> With all their blunders in the video game industry the past few years, I have just about written them off.
> 
> Can't think of the last time I actually purchased a Sony product.



I know right? I mean, NOBODY Owns a playstation anymore. They're really hurting for business on that end. Lol


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## manaheim (Apr 18, 2012)

rexbobcat said:


> nmoody said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This smacks of fanboi-ishness.

Does Sony sell tons of product?  Of course they do.  There is a huge installed base of Sony products, including the PS3.

That is HARDLY the point.

Ask some of those PS3 owners how long they were down after Sony's shoddy security rendered their entire gaming network useless to the point of Sony deciding they needed to REWRITE THE ENTIRE THING FROM SCRATCH.  

This is just one example of Sony's piss-poor business and engineering practices burning their customers, but there are more than any reasonable person would think acceptable.

I will complain loudly over the practices of lots of companies...  Apple, Sony, Adobe, Verizon... but of all those companies, only Sony stands out as producing garbage product time and again.  

I was once a loyal Sony customer to the point of if it was electronic and I was buying it, I was looking for the one with the Sony label.  They burned me MANY times before I finally surrendered.  Now I will NOT purchase Sony product unless I literally have no other choice.

And this doesn't even get into things like Sony installing root kits on their music CDs, their anti-competitive practices, bringing lawsuits against teenagers and grandmothers, etc.


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## rexbobcat (Apr 18, 2012)

manaheim said:
			
		

> This smacks of fanboi-ishness.
> 
> Does Sony sell tons of product?  Of course they do.  There is a huge installed base of Sony products, including the PS3.
> 
> ...



We're not talking about ethics. Lol

But regardless, every electronics business I know of had or still has bugs, marketing problems etc...

But that doesn't make their product bad. I mean, if a business kicks puppies but it has a good product then I'll buy it. 

It all depends on individual needs. I could argue all that is evil with Apple or Microsoft but if that certain company fits the needs of the consumer then I can't really argue with that.

Honestly, I am a bit of a fanboi when it comes to companies because I've never been screwed over hard enough to switch. Maybe that makes me ignorant, or maybe that just makes me content because I'm not spending my time complaining about everything.

I hope Sony doesn't go under. I don't like their cameras, but when I look at the competitors of their products they do seem to have a better long term reputation. Maybe I've just been lucky. I've honestly never had any problems with Ny electronics company ever...well...except...DELL....


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## Derrel (Apr 18, 2012)

Samsung is kicking a$$ and taking names...Apple stock is now worth 30 times more than Sony stock...Samsung stock is worth about nine times more than Sony stock...

I did not encounter any pay wall at the NYT site, but then again, I have not been reading them much, and get my X number of free views per month usually without going over their tight-fisted monthly limit.

What surprised me the most was the utter lack of cooperation between the various engineers in the differing Sony divisions; the refusal to cooperate with other divisions, secret-keeping,etc...made me think of the US intelligence community and the NSA-CIA-FBI secret-keeping that allowed the 9/11 attacks to go undetected because "some people" refused to share information for the greater good. Anyway, was surprising to read about how badly Sony is doing financially, and what a mess their corporation is now in, after at one time, being so prominent. Samsung it seems is the new heir to the Sony dynasty.


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## manaheim (Apr 18, 2012)

rexbobcat said:


> manaheim said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



So you took the one sentence I said at the end... the one where I said, basically, "I'm not even talking about this other part", and then responded exclusively to that part.

Well, you said it yourself... you're a fanboi.


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## manaheim (Apr 18, 2012)

Derrel said:


> Samsung is kicking a$$ and taking names...Apple stock is now worth 30 times more than Sony stock...Samsung stock is worth about nine times more than Sony stock...
> 
> I did not encounter any pay wall at the NYT site, but then again, I have not been reading them much, and get my X number of free views per month usually without going over their tight-fisted monthly limit.
> 
> What surprised me the most was the utter lack of cooperation between the various engineers in the differing Sony divisions; the refusal to cooperate with other divisions, secret-keeping,etc...made me think of the US intelligence community and the NSA-CIA-FBI secret-keeping that allowed the 9/11 attacks to go undetected because "some people" refused to share information for the greater good. Anyway, was surprising to read about how badly Sony is doing financially, and what a mess their corporation is now in, after at one time, being so prominent. Samsung it seems is the new heir to the Sony dynasty.



From what I've seen this kind of internal competition in companies is not uncommon.  Microsoft and HP intentionally follow this model, from what I understand.  However, that internal competition is actually MANAGED.  From what I've read about Sony, it's just dysfunction.

There was a really interesting interview with a CEO of Sony a year or so ago where he was basically like "Oh my god, what have we done?"  He clearly got it.  Whether he could do anything to fix it was sort of hard to say... and unfortunately that kind of culture change can take quite a long while to reverse direction on, and the end consumer seeing the change in the product line could take nearly as long after that.

If Sony survives (and I imagine it will... on momentum alone, if not for the sheep that continue to buy their products without thinking, not to mention the few really good or very well entrenched products they have), it will likely be another 3-5 years before we actually see a real difference in the average quality of products with their label on it.

I'd love to see it happen, to be honest.  Samsung needs a strong competitor, because while much of Samsung's stuff eclipses Sony in almost every way, they too have some pretty severe quality issues around areas that the more critical consumer would have issue with.  

Competition is good.


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