
It didn’t work for Nokia and it didn’t work for Sony. Now the Viao brand is not even owned by Sony and it could be the company unable to cope with the South Korean and Chinese competition, will also be getting out of TVs and mobile phones.
Sony has been a consumer electronics equipment brand from the company’s founding in 1946. But now the company is investing heavily in a component technology where it finds itself to be the world leader; CMOS image sensors (see Sony to raise $3.6bn to speed reinvention as component company).
That still leaves Sony in the games console market and as a creator of music and films. But these markets are as fickle as fashion. With the rapid improvement in performance of distributed computing the dedicated games console market could easily implode and making money in content creation in these days of easy access and piracy is more challenging than ever.
Heading toward the basics where a technical advantage protected by patents can make a company some money, and avoiding the fickle winds of fashion, looks like a sensible if restrictive choice. We live in fast-paced electronic engineering times.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
Sony to raise $3.6bn to speed reinvention as component company
Omnivision loses ground in CMOS image sensor ranking
Sony raises image sensor capex…again
