Apple needs to purchase PlayOn, develop a client for iOS, deliver living room gaming to AppleTV and put Sony out of its misery.
Why is everyone picking on Sony? Among consumer electronics manufacturers they're still the best. They make great computers (too bad about the OS, but still better than Dell and others). They make great TVs and home audio equipment, decent cell phones and the Playstation 3.On top of that, they have Sony Entertainment. Sure they're not Apple, but thats a pretty respectable product line up.
Suppose Apple did buy Sony? They wouldn't need the computer division, but they could probably use some of their engineers and manufacturing capability. As for cell phones, Apple could keep the Sony name on basic phone products while selling Smartphones under the iphone brand. Look for the next Playstation to run IOS and integrate well with Apple's other products. The TV and home audio lines would be a natural extension of Apple's consumer electronics lineup and the entertainment division would instantly provide major content for iTunes without having to negotiate with the producer.
I started out thinking a Sony buyout would be a bad idea, but the more I think about it, its not so bad especially if Apple can pick up Sony on the cheap.
I don't know why everyone still thinks Apple needs Sony to do anything. I said it before, all Apple has to do is make AppleTV have apps, make it a console gaming platform, and Boom! No need for Sony in the living room. Apple can sell HDTVs easy, they just use third-party panels like they do for all their other products. In which case Samsung LED-backlit panels are some of the best out there for the price, IMO... not Sony.
Look at RageHD on iPad and iPhone4. If they had an ARM 2ghz dual core, improvements to OpenGL ES/ or make it run OpenGL full, and pair it with an ATI 5000-series GPU, that would enable console-class titles as running on Xbox360, PS3, etc. I'm not saying Apple should do this, but I have to illustrate that Apple *does* *not* *need* *Sony*. They would just drag Apple down.
All that said, Sony is far from a dying failure as the article suggests... Sure they could be better and they struck out on several product initiatives. But their TVs, camcorders, cameras and Sony Ericsson, they're not exactly limping along, at least product-wise.
As for me however, once I moved from SE phones to iPhone, and Walkman CD players to iPod, and from Sony to Samsung screens, it was bye bye to them, for me. Strongly considered a PS3 but the graphics are horrible compared to what my fairly budget gaming PC can do, let alone what the Xbox360 can do. And Vaio was always unnecessary given you could get a Mac for the same price range.
Just imagine if Sony did go with GNUStep, that would be a boon for Objective-C and Cocoa. GNUStep, after all, should be source code compatible with Cocoa.
Why is everyone picking on Sony? Among consumer electronics manufacturers they're still the best. They make great computers (too bad about the OS, but still better than Dell and others). They make great TVs and home audio equipment, decent cell phones and the Playstation 3.On top of that, they have Sony Entertainment. Sure they're not Apple, but thats a pretty respectable product line up.
Suppose Apple did buy Sony? They wouldn't need the computer division, but they could probably use some of their engineers and manufacturing capability. As for cell phones, Apple could keep the Sony name on basic phone products while selling Smartphones under the iphone brand. Look for the next Playstation to run IOS and integrate well with Apple's other products. The TV and home audio lines would be a natural extension of Apple's consumer electronics lineup and the entertainment division would instantly provide major content for iTunes without having to negotiate with the producer.
I started out thinking a Sony buyout would be a bad idea, but the more I think about it, its not so bad especially if Apple can pick up Sony on the cheap.
Sony squandered their lead in televisions, portable music, e-readers, et al. They allowed their engineers to feature bloat a seemingness endless, confusing and undifferentiated army of gadgets, with more buttons and functionality than anyone sane person could ever use. I doubt even Sony knows exactly what they make, or how many, or why.
Their cell phone business is mediocre and requires a partnership to even function, their home audio offerings are nothing special, cameras and camcorders are overshadowed by Canon and Panasonic. They had many years of dreadful quality control and worse customer service. They clung to premium pricing in markets where they weren't offing premium experiences, long after they'd managed to kill market share. They have a few nice laptops, the Bravia line has restored a bit of luster to the TV division (while doing nothing to unseat Samsung as the market leader), and the Playstation is what it is. But that's pretty much it for what was once the uncontested kind of consumer electronics. They have an excellent pro division, but that's an entirely different company for all intents and purposes.
They completely blew it, in short, and today, despite repeated efforts to bring some order to their house, remain a messy sprawl of competing interests and products. How many different ear buds and headphones does Sony make? 30? 100? A million? I'll give you a hint: they have 10 categories of headphone, each of which has on average of 6 subcategories, of which there are typically 4-6 models, each of which come in 3-4 colors. That's the very definition of unfocused sprawl, and it's killed the company.
Sony would be possibly the worst acquisition I could imagine. It would be like buying a city, in the hopes that you could send in a team and salvage some decent real estate or manufacturing capacity and burn the rest to make way for new development.
GNUstep is in discussion to change their name as it no longer remotely anchors itself to the original OPENSTEP Specification.
They are focused on Cocoa but then again they aren't remotely there yet. Now if Cocotron and whatever they call it [not GNUstep] merge their source, clean it up and make it compatible to build Cocoa apps cleanly in this new environment [100% compatible run-times] then I can see SONY wanting to work with them again.
Sony squandered their lead in televisions, portable music, e-readers, et al. They allowed their engineers to feature bloat a seemingness endless, confusing and undifferentiated army of gadgets, with more buttons and functionality than anyone sane person could ever use. I doubt even Sony knows exactly what they make, or how many, or why.
Their cell phone business is mediocre and requires a partnership to even function, their home audio offerings are nothing special, cameras and camcorders are overshadowed by Canon and Panasonic. They had many years of dreadful quality control and worse customer service. They clung to premium pricing in markets where they weren't offing premium experiences, long after they'd managed to kill market share. They have a few nice laptops, the Bravia line has restored a bit of luster to the TV division (while doing nothing to unseat Samsung as the market leader), and the Playstation is what it is. But that's pretty much it for what was once the uncontested kind of consumer electronics. They have an excellent pro division, but that's an entirely different company for all intents and purposes.
They completely blew it, in short, and today, despite repeated efforts to bring some order to their house, remain a messy sprawl of competing interests and products. How many different ear buds and headphones does Sony make? 30? 100? A million? I'll give you a hint: they have 10 categories of headphone, each of which has on average of 6 subcategories, of which there are typically 4-6 models, each of which come in 3-4 colors. That's the very definition of unfocused sprawl, and it's killed the company.
Sony would be possibly the worst acquisition I could imagine. It would be like buying a city, in the hopes that you could send in a team and salvage some decent real estate or manufacturing capacity and burn the rest to make way for new development.
I agree! If Apple were to buy Sony, they would have to sell off nearly everything -- to what end?
What does intrigue me, however, is the possibility of licensing iOS to Sony for the PS and TVs.
It would have to be a non-transferable license, and Apple would need the option of first refusal to buy any technology using iOS, developed by Sony.
Given an appropriate license agreement, both companies could benefit.
A few years back, when Apple was still using IBM PPC, there was all this speculation that Apple would migrate Mac OS X to the IBM Cell architecture.
One of the advantages of the Cell architecture was that Cell chips could be combined to deliver a virtually unlimited number of CPU processing cores and GPU processing cores (using today's terminology). The primary disadvantage to the Cell architecture was the difficulty of parallel programming.
There have been a lot of changes since then. Apple has developed OpenCL, XBox uses PPC...
I wonder if, maybe, the time has come to use something like the Cell architecture in general-purpose devices.
I certainly am not expert enough to know -- but there was a demo I saw on the web (I can't remember where) that showed an app on an iPhone. One version used the CPU -- the second used the CPU and GPU and ran more than twice as fast.
I don't know if Sony is using the Cell architecture in the PS4.
But the possibility of:
-- a {potentially} killer game console (Sony PS)
-- a killer TV content manager/streamer (AppleTV)
-- killer TVs (Bravia)
-- killer iDevices (iPad,iPhone, Touch)
-- killer SDK (XCode)
-- killer store & ecosystem (iTunes)
all working together and speaking a lingua franca has great appeal...
it's time for Apple to just buy Sony outright with its cash horde. keep the consumer and pro lines, but then sell the media part to Disney. Sony has great engineers and some very good products. it always aimed for the premium market like Apple. but the software is always too complicated (like Nokia, dominated by the hardware guys). and the execs are stuck on what strategies worked last decade when they got rich. fire them all.
wouldn't surprise me if Jobs is meeting secretly with the old Sony owners now. Stringer has to go.
You are all idiots that don't know what you are talking about. Sony is dead. Apple is the new Sony. Steve Jobs won't waste billions to buy Sony. All of you are Sony fanboys. I doubt any of you are Apple shareholders.
If Apple were to buy Sony, what would they do with it?
1. Start selling Apple as well as Sony products in all Sony stores. Some might be converted to Apple stores.
2. Spin off Sony Pictures, with Jobs personally buying enough shares to elect one board member, Apple retaining enough shares to elect one board member, and the rest publicly traded.
3. Shut down all the divisions making products that compete with Apple, such as Viao. Keep any design teams that are useful.
4. Divest all the un-related businesses owned by Sony, such as the bank.
5. Make all remaining products Apple compatible e.g. Sony TVs and stereos would support AirPlay, Sony printers would support AirPrint, etc.
6. When Sony has been pared down to just the divisions which design, build, and sell products that do not compete with Apple, take it public and divest.
For one what would they get of value? PLayStation is a dying platformalong with the interest in Cell. Their consummer electronics line is crap. They name SONY doesn't have the attractiveness in consummer space it once had, in fact I'm not even sure it is associated with quality anymore. The pro lines aren't to bad but I don't see them fitting into Apples line up.
On top of all of the above a big issue is executive time. Time is worth a lot of money and frankly Apple doesn't have the management chops to apply to cleaning up SONY.
At one time I considered the idea of Apple buying Tektronix as iOS would be perfect for individual instruments in Teks line up. Imagine a oscilloscope or a signal generator built on top of iOS. Tek would give Apple another way to the pockets of the A/V pros without the trouble of SONYs massive antiquated product line up.
For one what would they get of value? PLayStation is a dying platformalong with the interest in Cell. Their consummer electronics line is crap. They name SONY doesn't have the attractiveness in consummer space it once had, in fact I'm not even sure it is associated with quality anymore. The pro lines aren't to bad but I don't see them fitting into Apples line up.
On top of all of the above a big issue is executive time. Time is worth a lot of money and frankly Apple doesn't have the management chops to apply to cleaning up SONY.
At one time I considered the idea of Apple buying Tektronix as iOS would be perfect for individual instruments in Teks line up. Imagine a oscilloscope or a signal generator built on top of iOS. Tek would give Apple another way to the pockets of the A/V pros without the trouble of SONYs massive antiquated product line up.
Actually, Apple does have the management chops to turn Sony around. Steve Jobs does " focused vision" better than any CEO and Tim Cook is the best operations/supply chain guy working today. When history books are written about Apple, you must spend a lot of time on how Tim Cook completely made over the morass that was Apple's ops business. He shuttered factories, negotiated new deals and got their supply chain under control inside of 18 months. Remember when Apple was famous for promising a new product but not being able to ship it for weeks or months? I do. Apple is no longer that company, white iPhone not withstanding.
Turning a company who was one quarter away from bankruptcy into the second most valued company on earth in 15 years is a ridiculous achievement in anyone's book.
Regardless, buying Sony is still a huge mistake. Unless there is a huge pot of gold waiting to be unlocked from that organization, most of Sony's divisions make too little on margin to be worth Apple's while. It's all about making money.
If Apple were to buy Sony, what would they do with it?
1. Start selling Apple as well as Sony products in all Sony stores. Some might be converted to Apple stores.
2. Spin off Sony Pictures, with Jobs personally buying enough shares to elect one board member, Apple retaining enough shares to elect one board member, and the rest publicly traded.
3. Shut down all the divisions making products that compete with Apple, such as Viao. Keep any design teams that are useful.
4. Divest all the un-related businesses owned by Sony, such as the bank.
5. Make all remaining products Apple compatible e.g. Sony TVs and stereos would support AirPlay, Sony printers would support AirPrint, etc.
6. When Sony has been pared down to just the divisions which design, build, and sell products that do not compete with Apple, take it public and divest.
great points, but japan politically would rather keep a morass of a company "sony" then let it dwindle to a side line of an american company, wouldn't the govt have to approve, and the way japan invests as a huge daisy chain of incestuousness it won't happen, apple better to nibble at its edges
the pictures and game division, and land holdings could help apple everything else is smulch
sony has become the poster child of japan's troubles
Sony don't just have competing products they have competing technologies. Apple isn't going to buy Sony and show them how to make better Windows notebooks and Android phones. The PS3 is an indirect competitor to the ATV. Why would Apple want to see it succeed?
If I were running Sony I'd try to negotiate a partnership with MS to become a premium MS vendor. There is still some cache to the Sony name but its lost a lot of its luster. I'd even drop the PS3 if needed to work closely with MS. MS needs a partner to help tie all the MS products together and Sony needs people who know how to write SW.
Sony don't just have competing products they have competing technologies. Apple isn't going to buy Sony and show them how to make better Windows notebooks and Android phones. The PS3 is an indirect competitor to the ATV. Why would Apple want to see it succeed?
Because they wouldn't. If Apple bought Sony, every single division would be shut down. The people would be kept, the base tech would be kept (panels, sensors, etc.), but none of the products would ever be made again.
Steve Jobs would personally set alight a massive pile of Memory Stick (pro, duo, xl, and the rest of the blasphemously stupid names) and dance around them.
Because they wouldn't. If Apple bought Sony, every single division would be shut down. The people would be kept, the base tech would be kept (panels, sensors, etc.), but none of the products would ever be made again.
Steve Jobs would personally set alight a massive pile of Memory Stick (pro, duo, xl, and the rest of the blasphemously stupid names) and dance around them.
Get rid of products, but keep people? You don't know much about corporate mergers.
You are all idiots that don't know what you are talking about. Sony is dead. Apple is the new Sony. Steve Jobs won't waste billions to buy Sony. All of you are Sony fanboys. I doubt any of you are Apple shareholders.
Don't hold back your feelings, tell it like it is ...
Just a small point ... In all the negatives about Sony I see no mention of the Sony Professional Division. They have been one of, if not the mainstay of TV production for decades.
I'd rather see Apple buy Joyent and either resurrect the Xserve or partner with Oracle to allow Mac OS X server to run on Oracle Sun Fire servers. Sony needs to restructure to get back in shape.
Their attempt to take advantage of GNUStep seems to be a trend with hardware manufacturers trying to go vertical like Apple. RIM made a very smart choice by going with QNX (really advanced OS kernel with a lot of potential for the future). HP has WebOS.
I can also see Nokia going with their own OS (they will scrap Symbian) unless their new CEO's past ties with M$ has major influence and they go with Win7. Android will fragment just like Linux regardless of Google's efforts.
A Sony and Apple merger should give us all polypneas* just thinking about it. There is so much wrong with that idea.
Sony has more potential than Apple did back in the late 90s to restructure and come out with something great for the future. I thought GNU was a step in the right direction, but they need to get on the ball.
* It?s an anagram of ?Apple? and ?Sony? that means rapid breathing
I can also see Nokia going with their own OS (they will scrap Symbian) unless their new CEO's past ties with M$ has major influence and they go with Win7.
If Nokia goes with Win7, I will be encouraged to keep my Apple stock. :-)
Comments
You are correct. Let Sony go under then Disney could buy their library of films for a song.
Song of the South?
Apple needs to purchase PlayOn, develop a client for iOS, deliver living room gaming to AppleTV and put Sony out of its misery.
Why is everyone picking on Sony? Among consumer electronics manufacturers they're still the best. They make great computers (too bad about the OS, but still better than Dell and others). They make great TVs and home audio equipment, decent cell phones and the Playstation 3.On top of that, they have Sony Entertainment. Sure they're not Apple, but thats a pretty respectable product line up.
Suppose Apple did buy Sony? They wouldn't need the computer division, but they could probably use some of their engineers and manufacturing capability. As for cell phones, Apple could keep the Sony name on basic phone products while selling Smartphones under the iphone brand. Look for the next Playstation to run IOS and integrate well with Apple's other products. The TV and home audio lines would be a natural extension of Apple's consumer electronics lineup and the entertainment division would instantly provide major content for iTunes without having to negotiate with the producer.
I started out thinking a Sony buyout would be a bad idea, but the more I think about it, its not so bad especially if Apple can pick up Sony on the cheap.
Look at RageHD on iPad and iPhone4. If they had an ARM 2ghz dual core, improvements to OpenGL ES/ or make it run OpenGL full, and pair it with an ATI 5000-series GPU, that would enable console-class titles as running on Xbox360, PS3, etc. I'm not saying Apple should do this, but I have to illustrate that Apple *does* *not* *need* *Sony*. They would just drag Apple down.
All that said, Sony is far from a dying failure as the article suggests... Sure they could be better and they struck out on several product initiatives. But their TVs, camcorders, cameras and Sony Ericsson, they're not exactly limping along, at least product-wise.
As for me however, once I moved from SE phones to iPhone, and Walkman CD players to iPod, and from Sony to Samsung screens, it was bye bye to them, for me. Strongly considered a PS3 but the graphics are horrible compared to what my fairly budget gaming PC can do, let alone what the Xbox360 can do. And Vaio was always unnecessary given you could get a Mac for the same price range.
Just imagine if Sony did go with GNUStep, that would be a boon for Objective-C and Cocoa. GNUStep, after all, should be source code compatible with Cocoa.
http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Cocoa
Perhaps. But Sony has no footprint in developing programming APIs. I just don't see them writing software.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10...e_buying_sony/
Time will tell.
Why is everyone picking on Sony? Among consumer electronics manufacturers they're still the best. They make great computers (too bad about the OS, but still better than Dell and others). They make great TVs and home audio equipment, decent cell phones and the Playstation 3.On top of that, they have Sony Entertainment. Sure they're not Apple, but thats a pretty respectable product line up.
Suppose Apple did buy Sony? They wouldn't need the computer division, but they could probably use some of their engineers and manufacturing capability. As for cell phones, Apple could keep the Sony name on basic phone products while selling Smartphones under the iphone brand. Look for the next Playstation to run IOS and integrate well with Apple's other products. The TV and home audio lines would be a natural extension of Apple's consumer electronics lineup and the entertainment division would instantly provide major content for iTunes without having to negotiate with the producer.
I started out thinking a Sony buyout would be a bad idea, but the more I think about it, its not so bad especially if Apple can pick up Sony on the cheap.
Sony squandered their lead in televisions, portable music, e-readers, et al. They allowed their engineers to feature bloat a seemingness endless, confusing and undifferentiated army of gadgets, with more buttons and functionality than anyone sane person could ever use. I doubt even Sony knows exactly what they make, or how many, or why.
Their cell phone business is mediocre and requires a partnership to even function, their home audio offerings are nothing special, cameras and camcorders are overshadowed by Canon and Panasonic. They had many years of dreadful quality control and worse customer service. They clung to premium pricing in markets where they weren't offing premium experiences, long after they'd managed to kill market share. They have a few nice laptops, the Bravia line has restored a bit of luster to the TV division (while doing nothing to unseat Samsung as the market leader), and the Playstation is what it is. But that's pretty much it for what was once the uncontested kind of consumer electronics. They have an excellent pro division, but that's an entirely different company for all intents and purposes.
They completely blew it, in short, and today, despite repeated efforts to bring some order to their house, remain a messy sprawl of competing interests and products. How many different ear buds and headphones does Sony make? 30? 100? A million? I'll give you a hint: they have 10 categories of headphone, each of which has on average of 6 subcategories, of which there are typically 4-6 models, each of which come in 3-4 colors. That's the very definition of unfocused sprawl, and it's killed the company.
Sony would be possibly the worst acquisition I could imagine. It would be like buying a city, in the hopes that you could send in a team and salvage some decent real estate or manufacturing capacity and burn the rest to make way for new development.
Song of the South?
Don't throw me in that briar patch!
"There's other ways o' learnin' 'bout the behind feet of a mule than gettin' kicked by 'em, sure as I'm named Remus."
They are focused on Cocoa but then again they aren't remotely there yet. Now if Cocotron and whatever they call it [not GNUstep] merge their source, clean it up and make it compatible to build Cocoa apps cleanly in this new environment [100% compatible run-times] then I can see SONY wanting to work with them again.
Sony squandered their lead in televisions, portable music, e-readers, et al. They allowed their engineers to feature bloat a seemingness endless, confusing and undifferentiated army of gadgets, with more buttons and functionality than anyone sane person could ever use. I doubt even Sony knows exactly what they make, or how many, or why.
Their cell phone business is mediocre and requires a partnership to even function, their home audio offerings are nothing special, cameras and camcorders are overshadowed by Canon and Panasonic. They had many years of dreadful quality control and worse customer service. They clung to premium pricing in markets where they weren't offing premium experiences, long after they'd managed to kill market share. They have a few nice laptops, the Bravia line has restored a bit of luster to the TV division (while doing nothing to unseat Samsung as the market leader), and the Playstation is what it is. But that's pretty much it for what was once the uncontested kind of consumer electronics. They have an excellent pro division, but that's an entirely different company for all intents and purposes.
They completely blew it, in short, and today, despite repeated efforts to bring some order to their house, remain a messy sprawl of competing interests and products. How many different ear buds and headphones does Sony make? 30? 100? A million? I'll give you a hint: they have 10 categories of headphone, each of which has on average of 6 subcategories, of which there are typically 4-6 models, each of which come in 3-4 colors. That's the very definition of unfocused sprawl, and it's killed the company.
Sony would be possibly the worst acquisition I could imagine. It would be like buying a city, in the hopes that you could send in a team and salvage some decent real estate or manufacturing capacity and burn the rest to make way for new development.
I agree! If Apple were to buy Sony, they would have to sell off nearly everything -- to what end?
What does intrigue me, however, is the possibility of licensing iOS to Sony for the PS and TVs.
It would have to be a non-transferable license, and Apple would need the option of first refusal to buy any technology using iOS, developed by Sony.
Given an appropriate license agreement, both companies could benefit.
A few years back, when Apple was still using IBM PPC, there was all this speculation that Apple would migrate Mac OS X to the IBM Cell architecture.
One of the advantages of the Cell architecture was that Cell chips could be combined to deliver a virtually unlimited number of CPU processing cores and GPU processing cores (using today's terminology). The primary disadvantage to the Cell architecture was the difficulty of parallel programming.
There have been a lot of changes since then. Apple has developed OpenCL, XBox uses PPC...
I wonder if, maybe, the time has come to use something like the Cell architecture in general-purpose devices.
I certainly am not expert enough to know -- but there was a demo I saw on the web (I can't remember where) that showed an app on an iPhone. One version used the CPU -- the second used the CPU and GPU and ran more than twice as fast.
I don't know if Sony is using the Cell architecture in the PS4.
But the possibility of:
-- a {potentially} killer game console (Sony PS)
-- a killer TV content manager/streamer (AppleTV)
-- killer TVs (Bravia)
-- killer iDevices (iPad,iPhone, Touch)
-- killer SDK (XCode)
-- killer store & ecosystem (iTunes)
all working together and speaking a lingua franca has great appeal...
... maybe I'm just dreaming!
it's time for Apple to just buy Sony outright with its cash horde. keep the consumer and pro lines, but then sell the media part to Disney. Sony has great engineers and some very good products. it always aimed for the premium market like Apple. but the software is always too complicated (like Nokia, dominated by the hardware guys). and the execs are stuck on what strategies worked last decade when they got rich. fire them all.
wouldn't surprise me if Jobs is meeting secretly with the old Sony owners now. Stringer has to go.
You are all idiots that don't know what you are talking about. Sony is dead. Apple is the new Sony. Steve Jobs won't waste billions to buy Sony. All of you are Sony fanboys. I doubt any of you are Apple shareholders.
1. Start selling Apple as well as Sony products in all Sony stores. Some might be converted to Apple stores.
2. Spin off Sony Pictures, with Jobs personally buying enough shares to elect one board member, Apple retaining enough shares to elect one board member, and the rest publicly traded.
3. Shut down all the divisions making products that compete with Apple, such as Viao. Keep any design teams that are useful.
4. Divest all the un-related businesses owned by Sony, such as the bank.
5. Make all remaining products Apple compatible e.g. Sony TVs and stereos would support AirPlay, Sony printers would support AirPrint, etc.
6. When Sony has been pared down to just the divisions which design, build, and sell products that do not compete with Apple, take it public and divest.
On top of all of the above a big issue is executive time. Time is worth a lot of money and frankly Apple doesn't have the management chops to apply to cleaning up SONY.
At one time I considered the idea of Apple buying Tektronix as iOS would be perfect for individual instruments in Teks line up. Imagine a oscilloscope or a signal generator built on top of iOS. Tek would give Apple another way to the pockets of the A/V pros without the trouble of SONYs massive antiquated product line up.
For one what would they get of value? PLayStation is a dying platformalong with the interest in Cell. Their consummer electronics line is crap. They name SONY doesn't have the attractiveness in consummer space it once had, in fact I'm not even sure it is associated with quality anymore. The pro lines aren't to bad but I don't see them fitting into Apples line up.
On top of all of the above a big issue is executive time. Time is worth a lot of money and frankly Apple doesn't have the management chops to apply to cleaning up SONY.
At one time I considered the idea of Apple buying Tektronix as iOS would be perfect for individual instruments in Teks line up. Imagine a oscilloscope or a signal generator built on top of iOS. Tek would give Apple another way to the pockets of the A/V pros without the trouble of SONYs massive antiquated product line up.
Actually, Apple does have the management chops to turn Sony around. Steve Jobs does " focused vision" better than any CEO and Tim Cook is the best operations/supply chain guy working today. When history books are written about Apple, you must spend a lot of time on how Tim Cook completely made over the morass that was Apple's ops business. He shuttered factories, negotiated new deals and got their supply chain under control inside of 18 months. Remember when Apple was famous for promising a new product but not being able to ship it for weeks or months? I do. Apple is no longer that company, white iPhone not withstanding.
Turning a company who was one quarter away from bankruptcy into the second most valued company on earth in 15 years is a ridiculous achievement in anyone's book.
Regardless, buying Sony is still a huge mistake. Unless there is a huge pot of gold waiting to be unlocked from that organization, most of Sony's divisions make too little on margin to be worth Apple's while. It's all about making money.
If Apple were to buy Sony, what would they do with it?
1. Start selling Apple as well as Sony products in all Sony stores. Some might be converted to Apple stores.
2. Spin off Sony Pictures, with Jobs personally buying enough shares to elect one board member, Apple retaining enough shares to elect one board member, and the rest publicly traded.
3. Shut down all the divisions making products that compete with Apple, such as Viao. Keep any design teams that are useful.
4. Divest all the un-related businesses owned by Sony, such as the bank.
5. Make all remaining products Apple compatible e.g. Sony TVs and stereos would support AirPlay, Sony printers would support AirPrint, etc.
6. When Sony has been pared down to just the divisions which design, build, and sell products that do not compete with Apple, take it public and divest.
great points, but japan politically would rather keep a morass of a company "sony" then let it dwindle to a side line of an american company, wouldn't the govt have to approve, and the way japan invests as a huge daisy chain of incestuousness it won't happen, apple better to nibble at its edges
the pictures and game division, and land holdings could help apple everything else is smulch
sony has become the poster child of japan's troubles
Sony don't just have competing products they have competing technologies. Apple isn't going to buy Sony and show them how to make better Windows notebooks and Android phones. The PS3 is an indirect competitor to the ATV. Why would Apple want to see it succeed?
If I were running Sony I'd try to negotiate a partnership with MS to become a premium MS vendor. There is still some cache to the Sony name but its lost a lot of its luster. I'd even drop the PS3 if needed to work closely with MS. MS needs a partner to help tie all the MS products together and Sony needs people who know how to write SW.
Sony don't just have competing products they have competing technologies. Apple isn't going to buy Sony and show them how to make better Windows notebooks and Android phones. The PS3 is an indirect competitor to the ATV. Why would Apple want to see it succeed?
Because they wouldn't. If Apple bought Sony, every single division would be shut down. The people would be kept, the base tech would be kept (panels, sensors, etc.), but none of the products would ever be made again.
Steve Jobs would personally set alight a massive pile of Memory Stick (pro, duo, xl, and the rest of the blasphemously stupid names) and dance around them.
Because they wouldn't. If Apple bought Sony, every single division would be shut down. The people would be kept, the base tech would be kept (panels, sensors, etc.), but none of the products would ever be made again.
Steve Jobs would personally set alight a massive pile of Memory Stick (pro, duo, xl, and the rest of the blasphemously stupid names) and dance around them.
Get rid of products, but keep people? You don't know much about corporate mergers.
You are all idiots that don't know what you are talking about. Sony is dead. Apple is the new Sony. Steve Jobs won't waste billions to buy Sony. All of you are Sony fanboys. I doubt any of you are Apple shareholders.
Don't hold back your feelings, tell it like it is ...
Just a small point ... In all the negatives about Sony I see no mention of the Sony Professional Division. They have been one of, if not the mainstay of TV production for decades.
This is where I get my toys that are not Apple
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/home.do
Their attempt to take advantage of GNUStep seems to be a trend with hardware manufacturers trying to go vertical like Apple. RIM made a very smart choice by going with QNX (really advanced OS kernel with a lot of potential for the future). HP has WebOS.
I can also see Nokia going with their own OS (they will scrap Symbian) unless their new CEO's past ties with M$ has major influence and they go with Win7. Android will fragment just like Linux regardless of Google's efforts.
Should be interesting to watch!
http://www.savethexserve.com
A Sony and Apple merger should give us all polypneas* just thinking about it. There is so much wrong with that idea.
Sony has more potential than Apple did back in the late 90s to restructure and come out with something great for the future. I thought GNU was a step in the right direction, but they need to get on the ball.
* It?s an anagram of ?Apple? and ?Sony? that means rapid breathing
I can also see Nokia going with their own OS (they will scrap Symbian) unless their new CEO's past ties with M$ has major influence and they go with Win7.
If Nokia goes with Win7, I will be encouraged to keep my Apple stock. :-)