As you know there is a very deep restructuring ongoing within the Sony company. This also affected the A-mount camera roadmap. There will be no new A-mount cameras this year because the new Sony strategy is to release a camera only when it’s really ready to challenge the big ones (Canon and Nikon). This means new A-mount cameras will be due in early 2014 and we are looking forward to get some specs of the new stuff.
In the meantime Daniel Loeb, CEO of Third Point LLC, the largest owner of Sony Corp. stock, published an open letter asking Sony to focus on few profitable areas, image sensors among them (Source: Image Sensor World). Loeb is that guy that made big profits on his bets on Greek bonds, mortgages, website operator Yahoo Inc and a fall in the Japanese yen. A real hardcore speculator! The investor believes that spinning off a portion of the entertainment business to Sony shareholders could sharpen the company’s focus and lead to higher profit margins, while helping to revive the core electronics business (Source NYT via The.me).
How could he influence Sony’s digital camera business? If Loeb pressure succeeds this will force Sony to cut unprofitable business even more than they did until now. This could mean for example, drop the compact camera business and focus on high quality RX cameras. But that’s just speculation for now. I don’t think Loeb will influence the new RX-NEX and A-mount roamdap.
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Check Title spelling
Gee wiz.. it’s Hedge Fund.. Thanks..
Ops some typo in the headline of this article: “hedge fund” not “fond”
IMHO, Loeb can write as many letters as he wants to. He should just should stick them where the sun don’t shine.
Hi goal is to raise stock value on a short term. Sell his stock thats it. He doesn’t care about “profitable” departments.
Agree, it takes guts and stamina to build sonmething over a longer period of time.
Show me one company that have a proven sustained growth with hedge fund in control, and I’ll show you two that have grown without’em.
maybe ur right, but sony has been fondering for years now—i welcome anybody that can make them focus—and he’s right, dump at least a portion of the entertainment.
horrible idea, Sony’s entertainment division including the massive Sony Pictures (columbia, tristar, MGM) and Sony Music are the best performing sectors of Sony. Sony’s content division is the main drive helping Sony sell hardware, it would be foolish to sell it. It Sony gives up its entertainment division it would become like Apple constantly having to negotiate expensive content deals with major studios.
“How could he influence Sony’s digital camera business?”
As long as such players are allowed operate it happens and will continue to happen.
All the brokers/bankers, etc, unfortunately, rule the world- more now than ever. 🙁
The key word in your writting, Andrea, is ‘could’.
Could spinning already profitable businesses make more profit?
Could Sony listen to one man who has made money out of others’ disgraces (in case you have not noticed in the list)
Could that man be speculating to lead Sony to a $h1t road and make money out of it?
Could one man speculate enough to make a bet on Sony’s disgrace?
These days, you never know what people really want and there are a lot of dual faced motherӣ$ers out there.
Sony is the only camera brand with no previous camera history of its own to have made a splash in an established market (DSLRs) with an emerging market (mirrorless) Sony is also the only brand to have truly advanced technology in the markets it entered (1″ compact camera, FF compact camera, APS-C 24mp compact camera) so it should be seriously thought whether trimming the imaging division is even a remotely decent idea.
Sony does make good cameras, potentially.. They already make top of the line sensors.. They just need to fire whoever it is in their management/design teams that is making them cripple their cameras beyond recognition or even usability…
“Published an open letter asking Sony to focus on few profitable areas, image sensors among them”
They are already doing it, and have a new (surprising?) deal with Aptina.
To compete with Nikon or Canon, need to drop the price of a99 significantly, release a $3,000 d4/1dx alternative.
Hey Pappy. That is exactly what they are NOT already doing! They are doing just about everything now. The guy is right. Find profitable areas where they can compete! Could be cameras.. The alternative is nice?
They don’t need to compete with CaNikon over the price. And a D4/1DX competitor for 3k is definetly not possible.
As I have said in many threads before – the only way to become in market sharepoint of view a competitor to CaNikon is to win a portion of the pro market. This would be defined through professional graded equipment and with top notch support.
What’s a HQ camera body (magnesium and weather sealed) worth if the rest of the gear is not in detail? They renew the 70400 for example, and they did not waether seal it.
Intended to say the alternative is NOT nice
Sorry
Profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit profit.
Says hedge fund manager.
Creativity and innovation, be damned.
+1
+1
change title to “puts pressure”, “makes pressure” is deutglish.
Creativity and innovation gives profit!!!! Where do you think profit comes from……
Its not very important what a single investor thinks… but in the end it is
of “major” importants if Sony makes profits. Today its not necessaryx anymore that we see a new camera every week…..! I remember when cameras were around for around a decade…….. ! We are getting longer intervals now of all camera makers from camera to camera….!
according to Forbes “…“While it is true that Sony has excellent products, such as …. mirror-less cameras… several of Sony’s product lines- e.g., personal computers and DVD recorders – lack scale …”. What i read is focus on cameras (among other).
As owner of many sony things I have vested interest that their service operaiton and regular product updates continue for the foreseeable future. In this role my hope for Sony is to really trim down their business but I see it different.
Music and Movies make money so keep them and grow them. Sell the TV, phone and may be laptop and may be compact camera stuff. Just abandon those overcrowded commodity market. There is plenty of korean and chinese companies to battle in this low margin business.
Electronic componennts, NEX Cameras, Playstation, movies and music make for great platform to conveerge and make difference. AFAIK Sony has few more business too.
So I do agree Sony needs a realignment but I see it more like IBM. Defocus from bulk manufacturing of commodity goods and stay higher up the chain.
Or they may keep on producing TVs and phones but they need to beat the likes of Samsung and Huawei with slightly better hardware and 10-15% lower price.
4K TV is here. All manufacturers have s chance to start over and take the lead. Even Sony.
Soon 8k will be here and everyone gets another fresh start.
Such men should be trated as criminals. “A real hardcore speculator!” should be a reason for condemnation…
Because of such people companies think only of profit, but not of us, customers.
To be precise, because of these “people” world is in such deep shtako.
Welcome to capitalism. No-one has obligation to make cameras of your dream.
If Sony can’t afford to keep the Alpha series maybe they can sell it to Samsung, they are a profitable company and can invest in more research.
Samsung HAD a DSLR system and got out of that market. They have smart people at Samsung who realized, as did Panasonic and as will Olympus, that competing in DSLR is a losing proposition. It’s a market that doesn’t seem to be appealing unless your company name begins with C or N.
profitable doesn’t mean Samsung is going to gamble into the DSLR market where the previous poster said, only matters if it has the C or N word. Go to BH Photo and the only booth that is occupied is Nikon and Canon. There’s barely any people at Sony booth.
I think at the point it’s no more about research but more on who can packaged the product uniquely to fit the demands of photographers or hybrids (photo + video) users.
Exactly… I have my own experience there, in the counter, the sales person explicitly said to me “bla bla bla, that’s why I don’t like Sony (Alpha).” He didn’t direct me to C or N but it shows that it is so hard to convince people to use a mount because even in the shop the people who sells it doesn’t even convince or like the a mount system.
Dear Mr. Loeb, instead of telling Sony to listen to you, please understand that you’d be much better off telling Sony to listen to their customers. Win win for everyone that way.
thank god.
sony already replied with a political “SHUT UP”
Ugh.
A Blood Sucking hedge fund “manager” telling a large corporation how to runs it’s businesses so that… huh!… imagine that! So the Blood Sucking Fiend can waltz away with even more money!! Those are EXACTLY the kind of people who _need_ controls put on them to limit their greed (but society and governments seem too shy to do anything about).
Failing that, jobs are lost, profits are _not_ shared, and creativity goes out the window.
Beware hedge funds, roll-up companies, and private equity firms. They are all evil and will kill your business faster than you could ever in a million years imagine.
Mr Loeb is only concerned with his own proffit and manipulating the stocks to his advantage.
He is totally unconcerned with Sonys long term health.
He is even less concerned with us lowly consumers.
Admin, Sony released an a-mount camera this year.
from now on no A-mount cameras. That’s the way I meant it.
Admin
You just said from now on no more a mount cameras.
Is that what you meant to say ir am I misreading this comment?
If that is not what you mean you should correct yourself before starting a panic.
‘this year’.
You guys are picking on nonexistent stuff..
Sony made a profit and earn money after a few years of recession. So actually they know, waht they are doing mr bloody menager
He doesn’t want profit. He wants a fortune.
Transcript of the whole video:
David Loeb: Sony, split so you can fail and I can make money, since I bet on it.
In a better world, Sony would invest a couple thousand $$$ and hire some consultants from a well known japanese organisation who’ll have a serious business talk with Mr. Loeb.