Sony has only a 6.2% in the TV market

[SingSing]

The Sony corporation reported another loss for quarter, and claim the loss against lower TV sales.

The number form the report shows how low can Sony goes :

"Sony cut its full-year sales targets for TVs to 13.5 million units from 14.5 million"
"Global flat-panel TV shipments probably fell 2 percent to 217.7 million units last year, the first annual decline, according to DisplaySearch."

13.5 million/217.7 million = 6.2%

That is not a typo !

[Hoser Rob]

It's not that much of a surprise either. Though, for those of us who remember trinitrons, it can't help but be a bit of a shock.

[Richard_G]

Increased competition. It used to be the case that if you wanted the best picture quality from a TV your bought Sony or Panasonic, now you can add LG and Samsung to the list. Both of these are cheaper than Sony too. I've always had Sony but the new TV I bought just before Christmas is an LG. Picture quality is every bit as good, fantastic array of inputs (4xHDMI, Component, Composite, Scart, USB, VGA) and almost £200 cheaper than the equivalent Sony.

[aedipuss]

i loved my old xbr tube giant, but with the sony corporate crap the last 15 years i've gone out of my way to find other sources for all electronics.

[jman98]

While it may not be the biggest factor, I do think that their constant attitude of "The customer is our enemy!" that comes from having their business driven by the media conglomerate side of the company is bearing its poisonous fruit. While I admit to liking their digital cameras, that is just about the only product they make that I will even consider buying any more. My most recent TV purchase was a Vizio and I'm happy with it.

[MOVIEGEEK]

This news doesn't surprise me, they have been losing market share(and money) for nine years. The only divisions turning a profit are Sony Pictures and Sony Music.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/global/1538506/sony-music-film-divisions-help-trim-losses

Other TV makers are also suffering from weak sales and thin profit margins.

[TreeTops]

And Sony's big push for us all to buy 3D TV's probably didn't help either.

[Cornucopia]

??What did 3D have to do with any of that?? Other companies that have 3D in their lineup (including the above-mentioned LG & Samsung, as well as Panasonic & Mitsubishi) are doing decently, including 3D sales.

This isn't about 3D, it's about SONY.

Scott

[SingSing]

but with the sony corporate crap the last 15 years i've gone out of my way to find other sources for all electronics.

After losing the VHS vs Beta war, Sony spend so much resources on FOMAT WAR, like BLURAY vs HDDVD, memory stick vs SD, MD vs CD, DVD-audo vs SACD etc....

Sony does these wars and made our heads spin, then unload overprice and lousy electronics on the market.


Oh, who won the format war on "one-ply vs two ply" ?

[Cornucopia]

No, that's a red herring, SingSing. Sony has those format wars mainly because they have been a consumer tech leader and they get agressive.*** They still are not a 3rd tier producer though, even if their products don't have the quality & longevity cache that they used to have.

What has most people up in arms about Sony these days is that for some time now the "tail has been wagging the dog", where the movie/music distribution side is calling the shots as to how to make the equipment, rather than having R&D and marketers find out what consumers really want/need and making them. So quality has gone down and features have been restricted. And they don't always play nice with others (sometimes not even with themselves!).

Scott

***Beta was originally better technologically, but VHS had a consumerist/cultural/logistical advantage and the tech got closer as time went on.
BD vs. HDDVD technologies could have been merged and avoided the war if Toshiba hadn't been so obstinate.
Memory sticks weren't really a war so much as never really a consensus until much later.
MD was never really a competitor to CD (maybe CD-R/RW) - it was mean more as a successor to Cassette and in the war with DCC it won because of improved usability & quality.
SACD and DVD-A are only at war in the sense that they both vie for Audiophile dollars, but they target different needs, neither won because both got strangled by the monster of copy-protection, and the waning of the audiophile industry in a post-mp3 world changed the playing field.

[TreeTops]

My statement about 3D TV means that in my area Sony was the BIG pusher of 3D TV's so everyone looked at those monstrous prices for those TV's and said: "Lets hold off for awhile till the prices come down." Well they didn't, so no one bought them (well maybe some did). That had an effect on Sony's revenues.

[Cornucopia]

Anecdotally, in your area you might have seen that, but overall, that did not happen. 3DTVs entered the market in the upper tier, but quickly moved down to a middle tier, where it remains. And costs have dropped for all manufacturers of TVs overall so 3D went along with it. If I can get a LG 47" LED 3DTV for $899USD, that is reasonable by most peoples' standards.
And 3D isn't a monolithic market, since there are Active-type sets and Passive-type sets. The technology built into the TV that Active sets need to enable 3D includes double framerate display (not too hard these days) and a wireless glasses transmitter (costing mere pennies). Passive sets actually pay a higher burden, because the screen has to be overlaid with an FPR (aka alternating-line micro-polarizer). The 3D real cost in active sets are now the glasses themselves.

Sony & Panasonic & Mitsubishi & Vizio (in their first models) all refrained from dropping prices in the 3D models at first, mainly because there wasn't much competition (there never is early in the product cycle), but with the addition of Passive sets, all have dropped nationally & globally.

I don't know why you are saying "no one bought them" either. Yes, 3D will never be the ONLY, or possibly even the PREDOMINANT market, but it's already way beyond a "niche" or novelty market, with little sign of stopping. And the newest models' technology is making it even easier (and cheaper) to include 3D-readiness out-of-the-box, whether people choose to utilize it or not.

Scott

[ranchhand]

I don't support any company that supports DVD zoning. I had some foreign DVDs that my "hi & mighty", expensive Sony refused to play; I got mad, went to a local big box store and bought the cheapest player I could find on the shelves, a Toshiba. Hooked it up and since then I can watch films from the foreign file racks from our local library, and it never rejected anything. It had all the goodies including upscale and that was 4 years ago. Sold the Sony in a garage sale. Never bought another Sony product. Years ago bought a Sony Handycam videocamera, remember those? It failed three years later. Loyally I bought another. IT failed four years later. I bought a Canon Vixia 4 years ago, have taken it all over the world, back-packing in the Rocky Mountains, some of the lettering is worn off. That was 4 years ago and it's still going strong.