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Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

I'm just worried about Sony's long term viability. They don't seem as competitive as they once were, and as you say, they have this not-invented-here culture similar to other old line companies that are no longer dominant (Nokia, IBM).

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I feel strongly that Sony has been changing in the past year and finally getting in the game again with genuinely great products. PS4 (best console), Xperia Z2 (best smartphone), Project Morpheus (forward-looking innovation), and now this.

Sony's digital cameras are very innovative (the RX range and the A7 ranges come to mind)

They bought into Olympus, that investment seems to be paying off.

You sure? They outright acquired Minolta.

It was about medical equipment. See: Sony to invest $644 million in Olympus, become top shareholder http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/28/us-olympus-sony-st...

Right, interesting. Although nothing to do with 4/3rds and cameras.

Correct ;-)

I think you are right. They bought Minolta and use that as a start in regards to their SLR range.

Can you explain this? Most of Sony's current products were probably deep in development before they even invested in Olympus.

Is there anything in Sony's current crop of cameras that is based on Oly tech? I don't think they've added Oly's five-axis IBIS into any cameras yet.

Sony's investment in Oly may pay off in the future, but I'm not sure it applies to anything Sony currently sells.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/10/5293414/sony-rediscovers-s...

Ha, does that keep you up at night? I'm surprised any company, save Apple (for cultural reasons), produces this sort of angst in people. What's your emotional attachment to the long term success of Sony? Where does it come from (serious question)?

Well, Sony used to make cool products (the first Walkmans were cool. Even the first Playstation was cool. The Sony Trinitron TVs were fantastic. The Sony VAIO line of PCs were hotter than Macs back in 2000...) - but that time is long gone. Maybe it's nostalgia?

Sony was the Apple of the 80s :) ... their consumer electronics were objects of lust, as you mention, the Walkman and the Trinitron lines.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/430757/rise_fall_sony/

And the company that Steve Jobs most admired ;-)

I think there are some major changes being made to regain this position and it is backed with some really cutting edge products, along with smarter financial decisions. I think the only thing they are lacking is the respect due to past mistakes, mistakes that have been removed from the line completely over the past year or are in plans to cut in the next few months. They plan to marked high-end only and it looks like serious thought in filling the need of better software and developers. I have no inside, but I would not be surprised if you start seeing HackerNews worthy projects popping up from Sony Developers in the next few years.

I hope so. I used to use a ton of Sony products (Trinitron, Walkman Pro, PS2, PSP, MiniDisc, SACD player) but today it's down to one: a TV set.

In 2013 (or 2012, not sure anymore), they made more money off their financial services than all of their combined product lines. That says how much Sony sucks at making products nowadays.

According to their annual report [1] only 14.8% of their sales came from financial services. What are you exactly referring to?

[1] http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/2013/shr/pdf/An...

I need to find the source again, but it's not about revenue but actual profits.

I believe that you may be referring to this article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-10/sony-tv-unit...

EDIT: Changed to correct link. Thanks e12e for pointing it out.

Wrong link?

To be fair, that could also mean that the market for financial services is extremely high margin or has an extremely large potential size rather than being an indictment of Sony's product lines.

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