Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

That's kind of my point. Sony became unfocused and muddled.

Fun fact: Twitter is worth more than Sony. Billions more.

You should see what Samsung is like in South Korea. It's not unusual to get in your Samsung car and drive down a road built and serviced by Samsung construction to the Samsung mall where you arrive at the Samsung grocery store and fill your cart with Samsung products. It works really well for them and has for years.

Checked really quickly, Sony's electronics (from computers to cameras) division market cap is a 34.8bn, I have a number of 34.7bn for twitter.

And Sony as a brand is split in different groups depending on the activities (e.g. finance, music production, content licensing, network provider and who know what else). Twitter's not in the same league.

Or you could say that Sony has remained relevant for 67 years. Will Twitter manage to match that?

Probably not, but no one could have predicted this of Sony when they started out making tape recorders. The initial product does not seem to matter much on this time scale compared to capital and investment prowess. Twitter looks like it is making a pretty strong start on one of those, but we will see what the future holds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony#History

Is your definition of 'worth' based on market cap? I'd imagine the enterprise value of the two companies tell a different story (though I've heard some dark news about Sony in recent years, aren't they still posting billion-dollar profits?)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com