About 20 years ago the Japanese tech company Sony was a symbol of Japanese technology and a highly valued brand around the world. Things change and nowadays Sony is not the powerhouse it was a long time ago. In fact things have been going so bad for Sony that the company suffered a number of quarterly losses in the past few years and is still not profitable. The goal as of now is simple for Sony’s management team – to return the company to profitability.
Unfortunately no matter how simple the goal may sound, its realization will be hard and may bring unexpected consequences. Sony is working now on a restructuring strategy that will likely bring major changes one of which being that some Sony businesses will be spun off into separate subsidiaries. A year ago Sony sold its PC business and spun off its TV division and now the same thing will happen to its audio and video business units too. As separate subsidiaries the audio and video units will be better managed and will be able to focus more on profits rather than on anything else while the parent company will focus more intensely on profitable businesses that include gaming, image sensors and movies.
You may think that this is big news but in fact it is not – the bomb is that Sony may exit the smartphone business by selling its smartphone division to some other company. Sony considers the same fate for its TV business too but there is an important prerequisite – someone must be willing to buy it first.
All these are painful measures but the Sony management team thinks these are the right steps to take in order to make Sony what it was before. In case things go wrong we will surely miss Sony-branded smartphones and TV sets. Will you?
Source: Ubergizmo