Bloomberg's Businessweek had an article (link below) not long ago about Sony that mentions this issue. Here is a quote:

In his biography of Jobs, Walter Isaacson writes that Sony had “all of the assets,” including a record company, to create its own iPod. “Why did it fail?” he writes. “Partly because it was a company … organized into divisions (that word itself was ominous) with their own bottom lines; the goal of achieving synergy in such companies by prodding the divisions to work together was usually elusive.”

What Is Sony Now?

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/what-is-sony-no...