Term Paper Case Study On SONY Incorporation: An Evolution of Technology
Term Paper Case Study On SONY Incorporation: An Evolution of Technology
Term Paper Case Study On SONY Incorporation: An Evolution of Technology
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Sony is one of the world's most widely known electronics companies. Founded in
Japan, after World War II in 1946 in Tokyo under the name Tokyo Telecommunications
Engineering Corporation by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita. The company has grown
from humble roots to a multinational giant. The company started with 190,000 yen--
slightly more than $1,500--and began researching. In less than a year, the company
released its first product, a power megaphone. In 1950, it released Japan's first magnetic
From the tape player to the Walkman to OLED TV, Sony's tradition of innovation
has made it a profitable company for more than 60 years. Kazuo Hirai, who joined the
company in 1984 and worked his way up through its media and consumer electronics
When Sony looked to go global with its products in the mid-1950s, it looked for
a new name because the initials TTK were already taken. The company came up with its
name by combining the Latin word for sound, "sonus," and the American word "sonny."
The company wanted a word that was not found in any language for trademarking
reasons. Many within the company questioned the change because of the time spent on
making its original name known in the business world, but in 1958, the name was
officially changed to Sony Corp. In 1960, Sony launched its U.S. branch. Eight years
later, Sony opened a branch in the United Kingdom. The company continued to grow in
the 1970s, when it expanded into Spain and France in 1973. German operations were
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Sony has a long history of introducing technologies. In 1955, Sony introduced
Japan's first transistor radio, the TR-55. Soon after, the company launched a pocket-sized
transistor radio. In 1960, Sony released the world's first direct-view portable TV, the
TV8-301. The company continued improving the TV and within two years produced the
tiniest all-transistor TV. In 1989, Sony released the Handycam, a portable, easy-to-use,
8 mm camcorder. In 2003, the company released the world's first Blu-ray disc player. In
2005, Sony upgraded the Handycam to the High Definition Handycam, creating the
As of March 2013, Sony employed more than $146,000 people worldwide. The
company's year-end revenue in March 2014 was over $7.5 billion, with an operating loss
for the year of over $1.2 billion U.S.. Much of that loss came from the company's decision
sales of smartphones and ongoing price pressure from lower-cost rivals in its audio and
division and Sony Pictures division remain strong, providing the bulk of the company's
With the vast of growing technologies and innovations nowadays, SONY has a
lot of competitors in the field of products and in the market. Despite some successes, the
company faced continued struggles in the mid- to late-2000s. In 2012, Kazuo Hirai was
promoted to president and CEO, replacing Stringer. Shortly thereafter, Hirai outlined his
company-wide initiative, named "One Sony" to revive Sony from years of financial losses
and bureaucratic management structure, which proved difficult for former CEO Stringer to
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accomplish, partly due to differences in business culture and native languages between
Stringer and some of Sony's Japanese divisions and subsidiaries. Hirai outlined three major
areas of focus for Sony's electronics business, which include imaging technology, gaming
and mobile technology, as well as a focus on reducing the major losses from the television
business. In February 2014, Sony announced the sale of its Vaio PC division to a new
corporation owned by investment fund Japan Industrial Partners and spinning its TV
division into its own corporation as to make it more nimble to turn the unit around from
past losses totaling $7.8 billion over a decade. Later that month, they announced that they
would be closing 20 stores. In April, the company announced that they would be selling
9.5 million shares in Square Enix (roughly 8.2 percent of the game company's total shares)
in a deal worth approximately $48 million. In May 2014 the company announced it was
forming two joint ventures with Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group to manufacture and market
Sony's PlayStation games consoles and associated software in China. It was reported in
December 2016 by multiple news outlets that Sony was considering restructuring its U.S.
operations by merging its TV & film business, Sony Pictures Entertainment, with its
restructuring would have placed Sony Pictures under Sony Interactive's CEO, Andrew
House, though House wouldn't have taken over day-to-day operations of the film
studio. According to one report, Sony was set to make a final decision on the possibility of
the merger of the TV, film, & gaming businesses by the end of its fiscal year in March of
The company’s strategies depend largely on a variety of factors and putting together
an effective strategy is an unsurmountable task for many firms. It has been successful as Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman, 12 pt
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its successfully planned for its future growth and well-structured analysis. An astute
knowledge of the company’s strengths and weaknesses and knowing its competitors are
This report analyzes the problems/issues which Sony Corporation faces. The
company is facing multi faced problems and its solution should also be multi faced. It
requires a major over haul. Sony's current financial difficulties are tied to its corporate culture
PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.How would you rate SONY’s ability to create and deploy their strategies?
2.How does the industry in which SONY competes dictate the type of strategy it must
3.How might SONY plan for the future in the electronics industry? What opportunities and
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DATA ANALYSIS
Discussion Question 1
As you can see from above figure above, SONY’s ability to create new products
is evidently seen for almost in every decade achieving awards and vast approaching to
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As a big and well-known company, SONY corporation always come up with
good strategies. This strategies is create and deploy trough planning proses. A strategy
is a comprehensive plan guiding resource allocation to achieve long term organi zation
goals. By this we can say that strategy is a shape of the way for what company will
become it the future. This company have good ability to create and deploy the strategy.
This ability have make them able to overcome any problem and stand firmly in
electronic industry. At all time, SONY has always used two main strategy, there are
partnership or joint venture, and human resource. This two thing are very important to
them. Sony has realize that by doing partnership and joint venture, they got benefits
like, gathering the strength with other company to do bigger work, and in human
achieving their goals. Sony realize the important of human capital and they know that
partnership and joint venture. They realize this tactic when joint with GOOGLE in to
take control cellular phone marketing. They was able to learn and have build android
phone technology. Their android has better system by backing up by GOOGLE online
always communicate directly to their worker in their gathering function and always
create the opportunities for dialogue. They always want to have a good communication
and discussion with their worker. I believed this two point is making this company
name stand really high in this business and their ability to create a strategies is very
good.
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It is also evident though its revenues. Sony is one of Japan's largest corporations by
revenue. It had revenues of ¥6.493 trillion in 2012. It also maintains large reserves of cash,
with ¥895 billion on hand as of 2012. In May 2012, Sony shares were valued at about $15
and early 2000s, in part because of the success of its new PlayStation line. In September
2000 Sony had a market capitalization of $100 billion; but by December 2011 it had
plunged to $18 billion, reflecting falling prospects for Sony but also reflecting grossly
inflated share prices of the 'dot.com' years. Net worth, as measured by stockholder equity,
has steadily grown from $17.9 billion in March 2002 to $35.6 billion through December
2011. Earnings yield (inverse of the price to earnings ratio) has never been more than 5%
and usually much less; thus Sony has always traded in over-priced ranges with the
Japan 1,873,219
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Europe 2,307,658
Discussion Question 2
tend to be short live..Differentiation Strategy offer products that unique and different from
the competitors - Research and development , cost leadership strategy seeks to operate with
SAMSUNG held true to manufacturing their products internally. According to Yoo Beun
from Sue Tanaka (SONY’s spokesperson).One of the methods of SONY is the formation
of strategic partnerships that allow it to capitalize on its own strengths as well as the
strengths of other firms like the alliance of SONY and Google’s open source Android.
accomplish long-term goals and sustain competitive advantage. Corporate Strategies works
with rivals on projects of mutual benefit. A business strategy is for a single business unit
or product line which identifies how a division or strategic business unit will compete in
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its product or service domain. Another strategy is functional strategy where it guides the
and workflows staffed by talented people ;need leaders who can motivate everyone to do
their very best work while strategic leadership is the capability to inspire people to
Discussion Question 3
Sony SONY looks not only to existing products but also in new markets where it
can advance its position. In future Sony have trend to entire to new market that have lower
competitor or niche market. Get market share in middle and lower market by reduce price
and made diverse product. Sony brand still keep competitive advantage like quality,
maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. It realizes that it must contend with its
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SWOT Analysis of SONY Corporation
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One of the sony SONY competitor is Samsung SAMSUNG corporation. This
improvement on their own. They do their research and development without any parties
take part on that activities. For them, their technologies is not to be shared and only to
be used for them and to be shared by other. Their advantages is, the policies,
technologies, skills, expertise, and culture of working is cannot be copied by other. This
will maintain their advantages in edge of competition in the industry. This companies
strategy in unread by any competitor which if that may happen it will let to the lacking
of their ideas to their competitor where it was the weapons for them to useduse in
competition with their competitor. But their policies also have weaknesses. First, they
may facing insufficient capital to invest in developing their new technolog ies and
continuing research and development. They don’t have enough money to do some
development, and not just that, in fact they may facing the lack of expert and knowledge
where all of this really costly to be gain in short time. This is really bad for that
company. One of they way to overcome this problem is by doing the same thing like
SONY, the partnership, actually SAMSUNG corporation just don’t realize that doing
joint venture is not giving all of your company treasure to the other, just sharing what
is needed to do research and development for new invention. Another thing they can do
is focus on marketing to reach target and make profit. This is important because the
profit is really needed to make new investment and build new project
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KEY DECISION CRITERIA
1.Cost Cutting
2.Competitors
6.High Pricing
57.Management Issues
ALTERNATIVE ANALYSIS
1.Due to vast of technologies and innovations, SONY should divert to a more in demand
2. A market study and environmental scanning should be done all over again.
3.Thorough rgh research studies should be manifested not only on new and latest products
and inventions but also with the management styles and strategies in business.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
1.Cost cutting, by eliminating jobs, standardizing parts, and cutting the number of suppliers
2.Moving factories in Asia, in order to get cheaper work force without allowing quality to
suffer.
4.Integration and cooperation between the divisions, which should be done by bringing
executives of different company’s branches together and discussing plans and goals which
5.Efficient management, which means that all these changes, should be done in a short
period of time and in most effective way. Products should be refined instead of reinvented
so that there would be less set up cost and greater computerization could be achieved.
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