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Sony CEO thinking over Ericsson joint venture |
carkitter
Joined: Apr 29, 2005
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From: Auckland, NZ
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On 2008-09-01 10:46:17, MWEB wrote:
On 2008-09-01 08:16:08, max_wedge wrote:
to split hairs on this issue and claim one or the other manufacturer is vastly superior in terms of imaging or audio, is to display an irrational bias.
Actually some of us earn a good living doing exactly that 
Exactly the point. You make money from starting these flame wars and get more hits on your website when people go looking for additional info to post about.
On 2008-09-01 12:48:30, Nitro Fan wrote:
On 2008-08-27 23:49:02, Sony α wrote:
@Soane28
Agreed all the way - with Hideki San at the helm, former head of the VAIO arm at Sony - decisions will be Sony Orientated from now, I feel as much anyhow - which is good.
Plus, Stringer and Komiyama are already well acquainted from Komiyama's past work with Sony Corp!
I have to say I feel the exact opposite, Sony are THE root cause of the appalling SW we have been subjected to Sony have never been able to write code that was not machine resource hungry bug filled and generally hopeless.
Examples: The next to unuseable"MovieShaker" as supplied with the Uber Expensive IP7 micro MV Video Cameras "the truly horrible machine "owning" "MG Jukebox" supplied with the top end Net MD recorders. I know I was mug enough to buy all of them and ownership convinced me that Sony simply cannot write code and secondly I would NEVER again buy one of their video cameras!
Sony corp are also the partner with a reputation for constantly changing storage media, & charging devices! I understand that using Micro SD and Mini USB does not generate as much money for the company as keep changing their offering, but the world has enough chargers and chips floating around already STANDARDIZE PLEASE 
In short I would say Sony corp have done Ericsson's reputation in the mobile phone market no end of damage I am seriously considering not buying anymore products due to their constant delays and poor record on quality control and shoddy product build quality.
[ This Message was edited by: Nitro Fan on 2008-09-01 11:49 ]
In the article I linked to Stringer mentions that Sony has not mastered software, he also recalls a Sony executive who says he has 35 Sony devices and 35 different chargers. He recognises these are problems and is targeting these as priorites moving forward. I think the Symbian Foundation will be good for Sony/SE because both need to reduce their reliance on proprietary hardware. An Open Source format will hopefully steer them in the right direction.
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max_wedge
Joined: Aug 29, 2004
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On 2008-09-01 10:46:17, MWEB wrote:
On 2008-09-01 08:16:08, max_wedge wrote:
to split hairs on this issue and claim one or the other manufacturer is vastly superior in terms of imaging or audio, is to display an irrational bias.
Actually some of us earn a good living doing exactly that
I don't have an issue with people writing reviews that claim one is better than the other, especially if the review is balanced and show both the good and the bad of both. But to seriously claim the K850 is crap compared to the N95 (camerawise), or that the W910 is crap compared to the N82 (musicwise) misses the point. The point is that both phones are actually good at what they do. Maybe one is a little better than the other, but it's splitting hairs.
For example if you wanted to buy a really fast car, and you had narrowed it down to two cars, would you care if one was 2Kmh faster than the other? Would that influence your buying decision or would you still look at other factors such as roadholding and driver comfort?
If one had better comfort and handling, the overall driving pleasure would be greater than the car that was faster.
So these kinds of comparisons are great for discussing black and whites of performance, but not so good at gauging actual real world satisfaction.
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islandprd
Joined: Nov 29, 2007
Posts: 176
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Here is one more article from one analyst saying that Sony may still have some future.
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Samsung trumps Sony? Not so fast
Andy Ho, Senior Writer -- The Straits Times (Singapore) , August 30, 2008 Saturday
IN 2000, Sony's market capitalisation was four times bigger than Samsung's. Just two years later, that margin was erased. And by 2006, Sony's market capitalisation had dropped to half that of Samsung. How did Sony lose its dominance in the global electronics market?
From the mid-1990s, the analogue world was changing over to a digital one. The two giants responded differently, but not just in terms of strategies, argued Professor Chang Sea Jin who holds the Kumho Asiana Chair at Korea University. In a talk at the Nanyang Technological University business school this week, the business professor noted that Sony's decline and Samsung's ascendancy arose from their differing organisational processes and office politics.
Sony is renowned for its gizmos that have what it calls the wow factor, like the Walkman, Trinitron, Blu-ray and PlayStation. This is because its liberal organisational culture allows its engineers to do research in whatever areas they fancy. But while this has led to wow products, innovation is costly and time-consuming. And great technologies may not be commercial successes.
For example, Apple's iPod debuted in October 2001, but by 1999, Sony had already developed the MemoryStick Walkman. However, Sony Music did not want its tunes sold online, so MemoryStick had no market success.
Meanwhile Apple, with no background in music, cut deals with the Big Four music labels to sell their songs online through its iTunes store that only iPods could access. In that way, Apple virtually created two new markets, one in MP3 players and another in the online distribution of music. Its iTunes store is overseeing the death of the CD format, and with it, the brick-and-mortar music retail business as well.
Sony - which does not take kindly to technologies it did not invent - responded to digitisation by trying to create synergies between its proprietary hardware and software. However, internal politics hampered that strategy. Its misfortunes started when the company's legendary founder, the late Akio Morita, suddenly fell ill and then, for six years, lay in bed unable to speak. Succession was ill-planned and poorly executed, leaving a vacuum at the top.
The man chosen for the job was the youngest among its top executives. He hailed from Sony's PR department so he had no credibility with the engineers. Then came the dot.com bust. Another top executive, upon retirement, openly and repeatedly criticised him for Sony's lacklustre performance.
Meanwhile, Sony's bottom line was weighed down by the purchase of Columbia Pictures, which Mr Morita had wanted badly. That deal eventually cost Sony US $5.4 billion (S $7.6 billion). Another problem was its rapid growth globally. Sony became a collection of independent business units whose top executives refused to cooperate with one another.
Samsung, on the other hand, was aware that as largely an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) parts supplier, its products became commoditised quickly. That is, they become less differentiated from other similar products soon, so buyers do not care who made them.
With any perishable commodity, speed of availability and cost are crucial. Thus Samsung responded by speeding up product development, so it could charge premium prices in the short period before other makers caught up.
In this manner, despite the small margins, Samsung derived huge profits from selling in big volumes - within those small windows of opportunity - memory chips, LCDs and mobile phones.
So speed and discipline were key. And Samsung has both, given that it is organised like the military. With the assistance of his generals in the Office of Secretaries, the 'field marshal' or chairman is able to control the entire Samsung Group. In this loyalty- and fear-based system, the chairman makes all the important decisions, including the hiring and firing of executives.
This structure has certainly been effective in executing plans where the boundaries and trajectories of incumbent technologies are clear. But it also inhibits creativity and originality. Samsung's culture of obedience, its dogged focus on the bottom line and its unrelenting emphasis on speed and efficiency have hindered new product development.
Thus the Korean firm is considerably weaker than the Japanese giant in its non-memory chip businesses - that is, consumer products where creativity is paramount. Samsung's consumer products do not stand out. Its Omnia i900, for instance, is just an iPhone clone.
Its engineers and managers may well be very competent but they are neither strategic nor creative thinkers. This is because the Korean school system does not foster creativity. Yet Samsung is wary of hiring talented foreigners, preferring culturally familiar Koreans instead.
Samsung's fear-based 'emperor' management system can make mistakes. With an inner circle (the Office of Secretaries) that may be afflicted with 'groupthink', no one may want to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Thus, its core competencies like speed in one area (dram chips) may be a liability in other areas (consumer goods), but who would say so? Thus, in 1993, its car venture flopped.
In his recently published Sony Versus Samsung: The Inside Story Of The Electronics Giants' Battle For Global Supremacy, Prof Chang details the shortfalls that dog Samsung despite its remarkable performance. He also reprises Sony's potential despite its present problems.
Samsung is now a market leader, but it has neither a clear technological trajectory nor another firm to benchmark itself against. By comparison, Sony has no lack of human talent or technological capacity. Its recent dearth of market winners has come from organisational problems and leadership deficits, problems which can be fixed.
So the tussle for supremacy is far from over. Moreover, the iPhone could be morphing beyond mere telephony into a computing platform. In a world of ubiquitous and superfast broadband, this could change the global electronics industry in very drastic ways. More than Sony, Samsung might find this competition too hot to handle - unless it changes fast.
Source: http://www.contentagenda.com/articleXml/LN844804384.html?industryid=45195 |
carkitter
Joined: Apr 29, 2005
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From: Auckland, NZ
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Thanks for that contribution, that's a very interesting article!
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Dups!
Joined: Sep 24, 2006
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From: GMT +2
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Very good read indeed!
It's not what you do or even how you do it but in what state of mind you do it: Dups! 2009 |
max_wedge
Joined: Aug 29, 2004
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Very interesting. Sony has made many market blunders over the years due to short sightedness and proprietary behaviour.
But the thing is they stuck around and continue to produce quality hardware, and even managed to win the Blue Ray battle which will give them a huge advantage in the home entertainment equipment market.
They are fighters, I can't see them fading out anytime soon.
Ericsson also have been going strong and continue to dominate in the telecommunications hardware industry.
I think the S/E JV still has lot's of scope for further growth.
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QVGA
Joined: May 23, 2006
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On 2008-09-02 01:29:47, max_wedge wrote:
On 2008-09-01 10:46:17, MWEB wrote:
On 2008-09-01 08:16:08, max_wedge wrote:
to split hairs on this issue and claim one or the other manufacturer is vastly superior in terms of imaging or audio, is to display an irrational bias.
Actually some of us earn a good living doing exactly that
I don't have an issue with people writing reviews that claim one is better than the other, especially if the review is balanced and show both the good and the bad of both. But to seriously claim the K850 is crap compared to the N95 (camerawise), or that the W910 is crap compared to the N82 (musicwise) misses the point. The point is that both phones are actually good at what they do. Maybe one is a little better than the other, but it's splitting hairs.
For example if you wanted to buy a really fast car, and you had narrowed it down to two cars, would you care if one was 2Kmh faster than the other? Would that influence your buying decision or would you still look at other factors such as roadholding and driver comfort?
If one had better comfort and handling, the overall driving pleasure would be greater than the car that was faster.
So these kinds of comparisons are great for discussing black and whites of performance, but not so good at gauging actual real world satisfaction.
Yes but the difference here isnt 2km. N81 is just miles ahead of W910 in audio quality. Seriously though you should give N81 a try. Eldar did, and so did i and i agree with him that W910 just isnt anywhere near the same league as N81.
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Nitro Fan
Joined: Jun 11, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: London
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On 2008-09-01 13:17:33, goldenface wrote:
On 2008-09-01 12:48:30, Nitro Fan wrote:
On 2008-08-27 23:49:02, Sony α wrote:
@Soane28
Agreed all the way - with Hideki San at the helm, former head of the VAIO arm at Sony - decisions will be Sony Orientated from now, I feel as much anyhow - which is good.
Plus, Stringer and Komiyama are already well acquainted from Komiyama's past work with Sony Corp!
I have to say I feel the exact opposite, Sony are THE root cause of the appalling SW we have been subjected to. Sony have never been able to write code that was not machine resource hungry bug filled and generally hopeless.
In short I would say Sony corp have done Ericsson's reputation in the mobile phone market no end of damage I am seriously considering not buying anymore products due to their constant delays and poor record on quality control and shoddy product build quality.
Is there anyone on here that can prove without doubt, once and for all, that all the SW engineers and programmers are from the Sony side of the venture?
Where is this informaton coming from, will please someone just clear this up and post a link?
I was under the impression that Sony is responsible for all the phones that are sold in Japan and are actually responsible for very few phones sold outside of Japan. I'd gladly change my opinion if someone could just post any information to confirm otherwise.
Hi Goldenface,
I base my assumption on the appalling quality of every single application I have ever had from Sony, and the fact that all the sw I ever had with my old Ericsson phones worked like a dream. But of course I could be wrong but seems a bit of a coincidence that since they became "Sony Ericsson" lots of the SW is dog pooh dont you think
I have owned the ... T68i T610, P800, P900, P910, P990, W950, P1, W960 But SE have now totally lost the plot. |
max_wedge
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@qvga, I hear you and I'll be interested to give it a try. However I still maintain W910 is a respectable music phone.
Maybe not the best but it's not actually too bad. I think a lot of the problem is because it has Walkman branding people (God knows why) automatically think it must be better quality than other music phones, then feel let down when it isn't. Honestly I don't get this thinking - personally I've never viewed Sony Walkman music players as being the best available. I always saw them as the high end of the mid-range, rather than being actual high end. And I'm actually a big fan and supporter of Sony equipment generally speaking.
In this context it's not surprising to me that Nokia have better quality audio reproduction than SE. It also doesn't surprise me that the Walkman phones have better music ergonomics than Nokia, since ergonomics are a strong point of both Sony and Ericsson individually and also as a JV.
It's that ergonomics that has left me dis-interested in Nokia offering despite the better audio quality. In my back to back tests with an N95 I found the difference in audio quality (compared to my W910) was mostly in low bitrates. At high bitrates the W910 performed much closer to the N95 in audio quality. So I'm happy with the W910 on the music front.
I am interested in looking at the N81 but infortunately due to my disliking of s60 UI (nothing personal I just don't like it), in both music, camera and phone ergonomics, I find it hard to be interested in using a Nokia.
If W910 was as bad as some make out, I mean not just "not as good as" but actually really poor in audio quality I would have jumped ship to Nokia, but as it is it's perfectly respectable so SE's commitment to their UI format keeps me an interested customer (oh, and also the style - I find SE phones much better looking than Nokia).
I agree that it's a shame that SE aren't trying harder to match the quality of Nokia audio on a point by point basis, but it's really hard to explain just how much s60 irritates me  It's not just what I'm used to, I've used all major phone brands extensively (except UIQ oddly enough).
In all my phone testing and using, I keep coming back to SE's OSE UI. I far prefer it over all other UI's.
I know this is even more off-topic, but I've also been pleasantly surprised by the W910 2MP camera - it's the best mobile non-AF camera I've used so far, I'm pretty impressed actually.
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se_dude
Joined: Nov 07, 2007
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Yea, Eldar also heard the W980 and found it crap.in fact, he went on to say that the technology used in Sony Walkmans produces an unnatural sound which is crap. And by Sony walkmans he meant the Cleasr Audio technology used in the standalone mp3 players by Sony.
So much for Eldar. |
max_wedge
Joined: Aug 29, 2004
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On 2008-09-02 11:55:50, Nitro Fan wrote:
Hi Goldenface,
I base my assumption on the appalling quality of every single application I have ever had from Sony, and the fact that all the sw I ever had with my old Ericsson phones worked like a dream. But of course I could be wrong but seems a bit of a coincidence that since they became "Sony Ericsson" lots of the SW is dog pooh dont you think
I gotta agree with Nitro here. Sony have a really bad track record with software. Clunky, difficult to use, crash worthy, proprietary.
The software that does work well, is to simplistic with zero user options or configurability for example Disc2phone, or only matures towards the end of the product life, for example SonicStage. PC Suite is a lot better now than it used to be but still has some flaws. The Mobile Monitor that PC Suite used to use was very unreliable, now connectivity is a lot more stable. But we don't get something basic, such as a way to manually connect or disconnect devices or a way to set one device as a default. If you are using bluetooth, you could have two or even more paired phones in the vicinity. But PC Suite will connect to the first one which comes into range. You have to turn off or unpair any phones except the one you want to connect with. There seems to be no way to select which phone you want to connect to.
Now I might be wrong but I'm not usually stupid when it comes to software. If anyone can tell me a better way to do it I'll happily stand corrected.
Please please someone tell me it's not that stupid! 
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MWEB
Joined: Feb 13, 2005
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From: somewhere nicer than you
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On 2008-09-02 12:12:57, se_dude wrote:
, he went on to say that the technology used in Sony Walkmans produces an unnatural sound which is crap.
Got a link to that quote ?
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se_dude
Joined: Nov 07, 2007
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Back when I only got my hands on the Sony A803 and enabled its Clear Stereo, I felt that something didn’t feel right about it, voices came out somewhat distorted and unnatural (keep in mind that the A803 is a dedicated music player and its equalizers are a priori better).
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/sonyericsson-w980i-en.shtml |
NightBlade
Joined: Jul 29, 2007
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From: Nessebar, Bulgaria
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On 2008-09-02 13:31:12, MWEB wrote:
On 2008-09-02 12:12:57, se_dude wrote:
, he went on to say that the technology used in Sony Walkmans produces an unnatural sound which is crap.
Got a link to that quote ?
He was talking about the Clear Bass and Clear Stereo technologies, incorporated in the W980 (and W902). Those are the exact same employed by Sony's Walkman players.
As we all know, Sony's PMPs are one of the best.
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MWEB
Joined: Feb 13, 2005
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From: somewhere nicer than you
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Indeed, the CS HE did not like, but on the whole the review was quite neutral i thought. it's only one persons opinion after all, and we all like and look for different things.
http://forum2.mobile-review.c[....]ost.php?p=729598&postcount=554
Two of our senior members opinions on that review, so how anyone comes to the conclusion that Eldar thought it was in any way "crap" is beyond me!!
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[ This Message was edited by: MWEB on 2008-09-02 13:02 ] | |
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Posted: 2008-09-02 01:07
