parislemon:

Chico Harlan, reporting for The Washington Post:

The pace of problems is accelerating. Sony hasn’t made a profit in four years. Panasonic has lost money in three of the past four. Along with Sharp, the companies’ combined market value, according to Bloomberg, is $32 billion — making them one-fifth the value of Samsung and one-twentieth the value of Apple.

The smartphone angle here is obvious. So is the pricing squeeze angle. Not-so-obvious: the complete and utter failure of each of these companies to understand the importance of software tying in with hardware.

That has been a problem and will continue to be one.

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p>And after what I have from (low rank) executives in Fujitsu, NEC and Panasonic (as their teacher) one of the main problems is the focus on Japan! All smartphones are made for the Japanese and maybe Chinese market. For some reason, no body could explain, the focus was put entirely on Japan, since the bubble burst in 1990.

Japan’s economy is in a death spiral, so if you focus all your market on Japan, how could that help?