Sony Slashes 10,000 Jobs 92
redletterdave writes "Sony will cut about 10,000 jobs, which equates to about six percent of its global workforce, by the end of the year. The move comes after the Tokyo-based electronics firm more than doubled its loss forecast on April 5 to $2.9 billion, and the recent hiring of a new CEO, Kazuo Hirai, on April 1. Hirai looks to downsize Sony and pivot the company in a new direction to get out of the red for the first time in four years. The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division, cutting about 3,000 workers in the process, and also make cuts within its small and midsize LCD operations. Sony did not say if it would cut these jobs in Japan, abroad, or both."
Electronics and music hugely profitable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable (Score:5, Insightful)
LCD manufacturing and chemicals used in batteries very much are news for nerds.
Re: (Score:1)
AFAIC, any news about a company that would deliberately install malware (XCP) on customers' computers, remove paid-for features afer a sale (OtherOS), and store sensitive customer information in plain text on an internet-facing database is news for nerds.
Normally people losing their jobs makes me sad, but I'll make an exception for Sony employees. As a victim of XCP I'll throw a big party when that God damned company ceases to exist. If you ARE a Sony employee, WTF is wrong with you???
Re: (Score:3)
If you ARE a Sony employee, WTF is wrong with you???
The same could be said of those who still buy their products.
Re: (Score:1)
Even moreso the customers.
Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable (Score:5, Informative)
but the article does mention the LCD operations shut down
No, it doesn't mention "the LCD operations shut down", but TFA mentions "mak[ing] cuts within its small and midsize LCD operations" to better compete with Samsung. So this is a reconfiguration of business designed to increase their investment and competitiveness in that market, pretty much the opposite of what you write.
Zombie Company (Score:5, Interesting)
I am going to have to disagree with your opinion. From what I have read from other articles, Sony is losing money on LCDs and is trying to get out of the market.
Manufacturing LCD is very capital intensive. That is, the initial outlay to build the plant is high. So while Sony is making money on the variable costs (i.e. the cost of materials, labor, etc) is can’t justify all of the capital that’s tied up to it. It can’t sell it because there a glut of LCD manufacturing capacity right now.
So they are turning it into a Zombie. They won’t invest any more money in the plant, and they don’t expect anything from it, but they will just let it putter along as long as they can cover the variable costs.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm sure that they are. The problem is that a Sony monitor (for example) just doesn't carry the same brand name weight as it used to. And when was the last time Sony had a big name in consumer electronics outside of the Playstation? The Walkman is a histroical footnote nowadays...
Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable (Score:5, Interesting)
The Walkman is a histroical footnote nowadays...
It's worth remembering that the Walkman was *the* portable music player for almost two decades. Sony was a big company with brand recognition and the resources to develop devices that would continue that lead into the MP3 era. The market was theirs to lose.
But they squandered the opportunity [slashdot.org], letting *Apple* become the dominant player. (Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple- a company that was primarily a personal computer manufacturer back when that was a very different market to audio entertainment- was likely to take over their dominant market position).
Much as I dislike aspects of Apple's behaviour, their foresight in developing and promoting the iPhone- even though they would have known that it would eat into classic-style iPod sales- cannibalising their own product, rather than letting someone else cannibalise it, and reaching even greater heights in the process- contrasts sharply with Sony's protectionist, insular, NIH approach to file-based digital media and the MP3 age.
Re: (Score:2)
Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple (back then still primarily a personal computer manufacturer, with no experience in what was back then the very different and separate consumer audio market) would even be a threat to Sony's dominance would have had their executives in fits of apoplectic laughter.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Not to worry (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
They probably needed to make more room for a legal department. As I understand it, their "right to extract a profit" is expected to kick in soon, and there are whole lotta citizens who haven't lined up for their collar, yet.
6% (Score:3)
I was actually just thinking, 6%? Yup, that would just about account for anyone left with a shred of morality in the company.
I'm hoping... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm hoping... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like they are going full steam ahead with DRM in PS4 (playstation and music still being profitable (possibly the most profitable) sections of Sony). This just sounds like they are trimming some fat so to speak. Ultimately most of the people who care about DRM are probably pissed off enough with Sony not to buy the PS4 anyway, so there really is no reason for them to get away from it.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course with my luck Sony will be repositioning themselves as a DRM company
That would be a good thing, in a way. Certainly make it easier for the pirates.
Re: (Score:2)
Fire the shovelware writers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe they should fire the shovelware writers that write the stuipid applets that sys inthe syste tray that get installed when ever you install a device driver for a sony peripheral.
Gee, I install the SONY monitor and now I have a systray applet eating CPU time and whatnot and while it supposedly is supposed to help me control the monitor but it leads itself in the tray so it doesn't "Take so long to startup" when I run it that one time to adjust the monitor settings.... When running it from the start menu and waiting an extra 2 seconds for it to load is going to take more time than the cumulative 30 minutes over the lifetime of the PC that is wasts because it slowing everything else down with it's CPU usage and memory consumption....
Sorry, I just hate installing drivers and having to install stuipid shit that I have to go back and remove after every damn driver install. Drivers are "supposed" to be only the driver, I don;t need no damn systray applet for USB Hub, Printer, scanner, DVD writer and LCD monitor.
Re:Fire the shovelware writers. (Score:4, Interesting)
My mom just got a Vaio laptop. It comes with about 20 preloaded apps. Some seem vaguely useful though (it has a fingerprint reader, does Windows 7 include built-in support for those? It doesn't seem to so the bundled app seems necessary). It also has an annoying Dock-type top bar that appears whenever you try to restore a maximized window and move your mouse too far up. And if you tap or hold the Windows button you get a nice keyboard that shows you all the Win+Key keys. At least it would be nice if it didn't do an annoying distracting popping motion whenever you tapped Win for the start menu. And mom wants most of it around "just in case" she needs it.Oh and the keyboard has specialized buttons specifically to launch some of these applications.
At least I got rid of Bing Bar, some webcam app, Norton trial (she claims she declined some offer, but it was still running in the tray), and Office trial.
Also I got to try out Ninite which was pretty awesome, except when I needed to rerun the actual setup utility for foobar2000 to install the freedb component.
Re: (Score:2)
And those colours!
sony rootkit (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit [wikipedia.org]
never forget, never forgive
Re:sony rootkit (Score:4, Informative)
Most of their customer base never cared. Even when it was plastered on the mainstream news, the average reaction was "well, that was naughty of them".
The relatively small number of us who do care are a tiny blip on their profit statements. Yes, some of us influence big purchasing decisions at our workplaces.. but realistically it doesn't matter to them.
Remember, when the PSN got hacked.. the absolute loudest cry wasn't about personal info getting stolen, it was that the network was down and games wouldn't work. This is Sony's customer base and they know it.
Playstation and music are still very profitable sections of Sony.. and I suspect they will keep right on doing more of what they've been doing. This just sounds like them cutting out some of the less profitable chunks of their business and not Sony getting what _should_ be coming to them.
Re:sony rootkit - is 7 years enough? (Score:1)
It was despicable but it was just one division (a joint venture at that) and it was 7 years ago so I think it is time to move on.
I would have been happier if there had been a proper apology but I still think its time to move on.
Disclosure - I did work at Sony from 2005 until 2011 but on the electronics side. If the root kit had become public a few months earlier I would have turned the job down. I have no current obligation to Sony.
Re:sony rootkit - is 7 years enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
I say we don't move on until at least one Sony exec serves serious prison time for using their music CDs as a vector to install a virus onto users PCs.
An ordinary hacker would have served time, but because Sony is a super-criminal with countless victims they remain free. Not acceptable.
Re: (Score:1)
Like the banks, too big to punish
Re:sony rootkit - is 7 years enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was despicable but it was just one division (a joint venture at that) and it was 7 years ago so I think it is time to move on.
I'm not going to "move on" when they still have the same exact attitude: harm your customers (with DRM) to stop the big evil pirates. I'm tired of collective punishment. One recent and obvious example of this mentality is the removal of OtherOS (some people like to justify it by saying that harming only a few of your customers somehow makes it okay). Another is the planned DRM for PS4.
No, they haven't changed. At all. They had no reason to.
Re: (Score:2)
Come on now. Do people really believe that DRM protects products from piracy?
Re: (Score:2)
Some people seem to. It doesn't in 99% of cases.
But you know what? I don't care if it does or doesn't. I believe it's wrong to hurt your customers trying to hurt pirates. It makes me wonder how anyone can defend this practice.
Re: (Score:2)
My point was that use of DRM is easily excused by saying "pirates", but the real motivation behind it is to limit the rights of paying consumers. Pirates break any DRM, so it doesn't really affect them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seeing this is rather sad. Why? Play "Steam" much? How about any EA game that requires Origin? Wait, how about Windows having to phone home in order to function? Go ahead, upgrade your memory and see if it warns you that you changed your system and have X more changes before you are invalid to run Windows.
Was Sony right in what it did? No
Do you pay for and allow much worse? Yes, though you will say "nuh uh, Steam does not use my information for marketing."
Re: (Score:1)
Play "Steam" much?
No. But Steam is as bad as a rootkit? What makes it as bad (I don't use it)?
Origin is simply garbage (like all DRM). I specifically try to avoid any products with DRM. I also don't see how you got the idea that the person you replied to uses any of the things you mentioned.
Was Sony right in what it did? No
What was the point of the rest of your comment if you acknowledge that the actions of other companies don't make what Sony did okay? Just to remind people not to use DRM, or something else?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I heard that origin was an order of magnitude worse than Steam. And I highly doubt it's anywhere on the level of Sony's rootkit, as he implied it was (I know you didn't say it was).
One thing I don't understand, though, is why Steam isn't just a platform for selling games. Kind of like Good Old Games. They sell you the game, and after that, it's completely yours. No DRM, and the games wouldn't be tied to Steam. Although, you could still have the option of tying it to Steam (not sure if that would have any be
Re: (Score:1)
Steam may be a little bit evil (it is DRM after all) but at least, it is useful.
By useful I mean that some features are available to steam users that pirates don't have such as a big part of online play, friend lists, automatic updates, etc... So much that I know people who actually bought a game after they played a cracked version. They wouldn't have done this it with a SecuROM game.
On the other hand, Sony's rootkit is a pure nuisance.
Its about profit (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Its about profit (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder how many millions of dollars bonus the CEO will earn by cutting the workforce so drastically...
Executives are being asked to return their bonuses, so don't think it's a big win for him.
What is sony chemical division? (Score:4, Funny)
The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division
So what is sony chemical division, like if you buy Sony-brand acetone then you can only use it in Sony-brand test tubes? Sony-brand chemical storage only holds Sony-brand hydrochloric acid that costs 10x as much as commodity HCl? That's how they run their electronic division...
I LOL when I thought of it, but I'm seriously betting they sell a line of completely incompatible ground-glass-joint glassware for chemists. Like instead of standard 14/20 taper, theirs is probably 16.335/23.235, that spec is trademarked and copyrighted up the wazoo, and costs 10 times as much as normal glassware and they aggressively sue anyone trying to use it with normal taper glassware. (On a slightly related note, what is it with you european chemists, on this side of the pond we use two tapers, "big and small (14/20 is the small)" yet we're taught that you guys have something like 10 mutually incompatible tapers... whats up with that... I would think you metric EU people would simply have the one taper to rule them all but no we're told you've got a dozen in common use)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
> --"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"Religion gave us buildings, Math gave us the financial crisis, with people being evicted from their buildings".
Well I think you can make dozens of such inane comparisons.
Nothing prevents people from being atheist and respectful of logic, and yet people persist pitting religion against science. What if somebody advanced enough does things that mechanical/probabilistic models in current science can't explain? You'd find
Re:Yuk it up, kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
Geeks are the most selfish and entitled people on the planet.
You've obviously never met a politician, or executive type.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of them are flat out sociopaths.
An armchair psychologist says it, so it must be true. If it's that easy to be diagnosed as a sociopath, then perhaps that's what 99% of humans are. "Oh, you have a different sense of humour than me? Sociopath."
Bad Karma Sony, Bad Karma... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I thought that the previous CEO came from the movie or content division, and led the company away from being a tech focus to a content provider. All directions from that decision lead to the problems that you mention. For many years now ( possibly 10) I have refused to buy any Sony product. The new CEO has a chance to change things back. I dont know his history of plans, but I am willing to pay attention to them for the next few years and maybe consider purchasing something if they can fix their reputation.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Samsung does do DRM on many products, took part in the HD format war (what was wrong with it anyway) leaving the only nastiness proprietary components (presumably memory sticks) which some products don't have. Samsung is a massive powerful tough competitor, they make some quality gear now. I have a feeling that they will be seen as the bad guy within the next 5 years.
Lobbying to lower blu-ray prices would probably be illegal under anti-trust law. Removing DRM on the PS4 would be brave move, a mechanism for
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Vita locked to a single PSN account, families cannot use them like the PS3.
I've been told in comments to other stories that families already can't use the PS3. Compared to games for the Wii, games for both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 have been eschewing split-screen multiplayer in favor of online multiplayer, killing their whole advantage over a PC.
Re: (Score:3)
1. Keep up with high quality products and try to market it as worth the price. This could risk not getting the consumers attention or not really worth it and they will go with the cheap competitor alternative.
2. Lower their product
Re: (Score:2)
Sony had a "reputation" for being THE company to buy from, but I'd found that there products looked good but were fairly poor quality. I spent a bundle on a Walkman that was barely larger than a tape case only to have it crap out on me less than a year later from a torn ribbon cable that connect the door (with all the controls on it) to the body. Went back to Koss and never had another problem with my big clunky walkman. Friends had similar issues with Sony TVs and VCRs. I'd almost learned my lesson, then i
Re: (Score:1)
Sony products are still good.
I have a lot of Sony products that I bought because they fitted my needs the most, it had nothing to do with brand names.
For example while "Bravia Engine" may be a collection of crappy filters, IMHO the end result looks better than its competitors image enhancement algorithms. Sure, if you turn it off (an understandable choice) then there is no reason to pay for this feature but for some people it matters. Likewise, some people have no use for a manual focus-ring (they just want
Downsizing their customer base (Score:5, Funny)
Question for Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
How is your war on users going? Is that working out for you the way you expected? Perhaps, just perhaps, your customers are not your enemies? Think about this please, you could be such a great company if not for a small handful of policies.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
How is your war on users going? Is that working out for you the way you expected? Perhaps, just perhaps, your customers are not your enemies? Think about this please, you could be such a great company if not for a small handful of policies.
/. rants aside, the parts of the business that are related, even slightly, to what you're talking about are still doing just fine at Sony.
Television or Music (Score:2)
I don't really know who produces the music I listen to. I am not going to buy a popular recording because of a label. But with all the negati
List of Sony Chemical products... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Sony Bourne Again Shell (Score:5, Funny)
We'll be waiting for your Sony bash
Sony bash hasn't been around since PS3 firmware 3.21.
Two words- root kit (Score:2)
The question I had to ask myself with Sony from then on was- have they learned their lesson and can i trust them? Do I want to put this on my computer or do I want to look for alternatives?
Corporations have to try harder to reduce the number of sociopaths in their hierarchies so a bunch of them can't get together and do something like THAT.
They're in trouble (Score:3)
Most cuts will be abroad (Score:2)
Joys of misreading (Score:1)
Well, too late I guess...
Holy shit dude! (Score:2)
"The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division"
This just boggles my mind, these half retarded asswipes cant even release a music CD without it exploding into a world wide shitstorm and they were allowed to even think about a chemicals division, let alone have one to sell?
I actually feel scared now, what the fuck else do they have? A nuclear weapons division with its passwords stored on PSN?
Re: (Score:2)