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Comment by cheema33 | Hacker News Reader

And Sony's decline continues. This move reeks of desperation.

I used to buy a lot of Sony products. Lately. Zilch. I know they still make some movies and PS5. But, man, they used to be so much bigger than that.

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They make good headphones too. I think that's the only Sony hardware in my house.

The only Sony product left in my house. The iPod/iPhone made the Walkman obsolete, and that was way back then. I had a PS3, but only because it was the best Blu-ray player on the market that also just happened to play a few games (as used in my house). After that, nothing. Not even a cinema camera any more either. Sony is the ghost in the shell at this point.

I bought a Sony TV a couple days ago. It’s just a Samsung panel identical to a current Samsung TV but placed into Sony innards. Which means no stupid terrible Samsung software! That’s really why I chose it. So seeing this comment tree points out the irony that the value of Sony for me was that it’s essentially repackaging someone else’s known-good product.

Sony camera business seems very strong. They’re clearly the leader in mid-range video in their A7 line and are quite commonly discussed in Hollywood blockbuster making-of, I think the recent Top Gun was shot on all Sony hardware. They’re the sensor in iPhone.

Their stock valuation and chart is looking strong over the past decade. Is Japan playing with their currency valuation that much that it's making failing companies look like rockstars on the charts?

The Yen is the lowest it's been in a long time so probably not.

Or Hacker News sentiment isn't representative, and the business has performed well.

I'm sure the Sony patent portfolio has been something they've leaned on for some time, but even that has to start running out at some point. They do make a lot of the camera sensors that everyone else uses[0], and they do excel at that. They used to lead in video monitors, but I think even that has slipped below some of the Korean manufactures like LG or Samsung. Do they still make other chips? I'm not sure what all their portfolio contains, but it is definitely thicker than my knee jerk reaction of them would joke. I thought Sony might have had a hand in the blue LED, but I don't see their name any where in the wiki of Shuji Nakamura[1].

[0] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/sony-aims-for-60-sha...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura

Japan is utterly desperate. They are selling out the whole country to tourists, investment funds, and whomever has a penny to spare. The political class is going for broke, grasping at every penny they can now, before the mountain of debt comes crashing down, or the population has enough of hidden immigration, inflation, and tourists driving go-carts on the streets of Ginza.

While that seems to be a bit of a dim characterization of the place, who isn't trying to do that?

Seems like we are in the last decade or two of trying an accounting trick possible to ignore the grim reality of growth based economics. Cannot go on forever.

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