No wonder Sony can't compete in the hardware realm.
What hardware realm? They're involved all over.
Right now they're absolutely crushing the camera market - the A73 and AR73 are taking the world by storm, with tons of Canon and Nikon DSLR converts (Including myself). Their GM lenses are the sharpest available at a lot of focal lengths, the bokeh is close to the top of readily available modern lenses, etc. They're certainly competing there.
Their UHS-II cards are some of the fastest on the market.
The PS4 is the leader in lifetime sales vs. other consoles.
What hardware are you talking about?
Sony's camera division makes money from selling camera parts to other companies - including Apple.
Then the iPhone came out and just being a phone wasn't good enough.
Now everyone else uses Sony's sensor anyway so what is their advantage? Lenses?
Maybe not the first, damned close.
My comment does not refer to the gaming and photography divisions, as those are cash cows for Sony.
That said, they seem to do way less marketing than Samsung or Apple.
Even so, they have carved out a niche of making smaller Android phones (their Compact variants) that share internals with their larger brethren.
You're off by a factor of two. The PS4 has been out for 4.5 years, not "8 years or so".
> It may outsell the PS4 right now, though.
In FY2017 the PS4 sold 19 million units. The Switch sold 13 million (15.5M sold in total so far, but 2.7M were in FY2016).