Press Clippings: At one time, SONY products were the envy of the electronic world.
They had terrific and clean industrial design, ahead-of-the-crowd engineering, vision (Walkman, Trinitron). SONY broadcasting equipment was the gold standard at the networks and responsible for bringing you the biggest sporting events and the most popular shows.
Among PCs, the SONY Vaio models were the only ones which had the type of high-level design and elegance associated with Apple’s Macintosh line of computers. And then, over time, Apple put more distance between itself and it’s Windows-running competitors. SONY’s PCs, no matter how beautifully designed, could not keep up in terms of performance and convenience with the more tightly integrated, more elegant software found in Apple computers. That situation didn’t force SONY into commodity mode–i.e. reducing prices on their sleek laptops–and so SONY’s top level product remained priced at the top as the market for PCs in general and pricey PCs in particular started it’s downward spiral.
Now, SONY appears to realize it’s over. Several news sources reported today that SONY is in preliminary discussions to divest it’s PC business. Here’s the link to one particularly good article, on Bloomberg.
It’s the end of another electronic era, for yet another formerly major player.
And yet, today, some evidence that it didn’t have to end that way, in this short post , first picked up/noticed by Daring Fireball.
The disruption will continue.