Fall Of Sony Empire

[MajorWest]

I was reading an article on this recently and food for thought. It seems to me what happened to Britain around the early sixties also happened mid nineties, in part to Japan and more specifically to Sony.
As I recall, when the transistor came out in the late fifties, Japan was very quick to grab a share of the potential market and mass produce pocket transistor radios. I do have some nice examples of home made transistor sets such as BEREC but these tend to fall down on image. The one I have sounds O.K. but is a basket-picnic design. Whereas Japan was doing fairly trendy sets in the little strap cases and so on.
Now it seems the chip has taken the market away from Sony. Effectively it means more and more electronics devices could be assembled more quickly without the need for more skilled engineers or indeed service support employees. A knock on effect is the buy and sling culture. I have a friend whose TV broke down recently and was intrigued and baffled to see she was just going to take it to the garbage site and buy a new set.
Hard to say how modern electronics compares with the Sony era. I think the bulk of it isn't as long-lasting. I've always struggled to find DVD players that last. I got through 4 or 5 DVD portables and many only lasted a year. I was getting so annoyed I was seriously considering going back to VCR (I have fond memories of the old video stores).
I'm sure there are plenty of modern devices that indicate progress. At the moment I have a mid nineties synth that performs pretty well but imagine the modern Korgs must have a lot more scope.
As for Sony I actually have a few radios made by Sony and they run just fine.

[Mike. Watterson]

BEREC (British Ever Ready Export Co) was Ever Ready Export marketing, except just before Hanson Trust did hostile Takeover in 1982 they renamed the Domestic Ever Ready to BEREC. In 1905 they were BEREC (British Ever Ready Electrical Co).
Ever Ready did no radios after the 1960s till 1982, when they distributed three badly made models (seems to have been no Factory QA/QC), Skytime, Skyleader and Skymaster (no spaces). BEREC never ever made UK transistor sets. Ever Ready did 1958 to 1964 approximately, some of which exported as BEREC. Almost all in common with everything since Ever Ready Model C had no decent case design/styling (Perhaps the Sky master and Sky Leader not too bad, but expensive plywood & Leatherette). 1946 to 1966 Pye did some decent styles.
Note the small cute plastic Japan sets had been copied from early USA Transistor set style and small USA & Japan Valve sets using 45V or 67V HT, a D cell and hearing Aid/Military sub miniature valves.

The UK domestic electronics failed for several reasons:
1) The original founders dead or retired, no vision
2) Decisions too much made on cost, not quality or Style
3) Poor quality of off shore production except KB (ITT). Pye owned Hong Kong production.
4) Rubbish quality UK parts, especially capacitors.
5) Decisions made by Accountants and Asset strippers & conglomerates.

Read The Setmakers, the obituary of UK Domestic Radio & TV.

Sony was founded in 1946 and renamed to Sony in 1950s for Western market.
Their electronics (i.e. Minidisc) were crippled by dominance of their Media Division.
The problems of Japanese economy resulted in Offshore production of many products.
After CRT they lost any pre-eminence in TV.
The CD Root kit fiasco finally killed their reputation (already damaged by artificial restrictions on Mini-Disc).
They tried to compete with Apple on Laptop. No-one wants to pay a 20% premium for same thing (Apple's approach is doomed even for Apple). So Sony laptops are gone in West.
Only the PS4 is doing much for them.

The situation isn't really the same as UK demise.

Almost no product is economic to repair due to production cost so low due to automation (HDTV cheaper in real terms than a 1950s Radio!). Products are made now in particular places now due to component infrastructure, not labour costs (HDDs in Thailand).
Also many products are only designed for easy assembly, not repair (Apple glued together products.)
Apple use to have their own plants in places like USA and Ireland. Now they are purely a Marketing and IP company, most R&D expenditure is on Patents, not development. The 1st iPhone used standard parts, a bought in GUI (fingerworks) put on cut down version of their OS X.

Sony are not gone yet. They are in serious trouble. But even a very successful company like Apple is extremely vulnerable as almost all is 3rd party production, they have very narrow product range and few products, massively over priced (x3 margin of competitors) and rely entirely on Market perception.

I doubt that Sony designs or makes any radio sets, they are likely all 3rd party. I've not seen any decent Sony portable sets like ICF2001D etc.

Philips sold Radio brand and the TV brand to separate Asian companies.

Does ANYONE make any decent portable radio sets any more? The £110+ (€149 Ireland) Classic Roberts is no better than the €14 Tesco Kitchen Radio (insides are similar). They are owned by Glen-Dimplex conglomerate, also responsible for "cost reduction" of Russell-Hobbs (Irons going on fire lately, over priced kettles etc).

DVDs today are rubbish compare to ones 6 to 10 years ago. Built down to a price. You can buy one for less than what a service engineer needs to charge to open one.

[Radio Wrangler]

Sony have also long been a very serious chip-maker.

In the 1980s *the* DACs to use in high performance direct digital synthesisers were the sony ones (designed originally for high performance digital TV)

Currently they make some of the very best photographic sensor chips as found in Sony (nee Minolta) and Nikon cameras.

Sony have a number of business problems, but I don't think they failed to adapt to integrated circuits. They've been clobbered by the overall industry movement to lower labour cost countries and they've been in the wilderness a bit as far as conceiving desirable products goes. They also got hit badly by the costs of those melting/burning lithium battery packs.

There's a lot of good stuff and people in Sony. Recovery is possible, but never assured.

David

[ms660]

I guess I'm biased, I hope they survive, I used to work for Gendis (General Distributors/Sony of Canada) as chief tech in their main service dept, the best firm I ever worked for when I was in the trade, the Cohen's were the first to distribute in Canada the early Sony transistor radio's called the Sony Gendis, I believe Sony were one of the first to make transistor radios using their own semi conductors.

Joseph H Cohen was my boss, a marvelous man, I also met Sony's founder as there was a close working relationship between him and the Cohen brothers, we all had to shave our whiskers off for the event, the spares dept at our workshop was second to none, virtually everything in stock going back to 1955, test gear was no problem "You need a new 'scope and a stereo generator, we'll get you a new 'scope and stereo generator"

We serviced virtually the all models and types ever made TV, radio, R to R, casette, hifi, language lab, casette duplicators, Elcaset, Betamax etc, U Matic's were handled by the industrial dept across town.

I remember having to check out the first batch of Elcaset's, they were held at a bonded warehouse near Vancouver airport, on checking them we found a problem, erratic touch pad operation, the findings were sent off to Japan, a small modification followed, I/we had to do hundreds of them before for they were allowed to be distributed.

Lawrence.

[mark pirate]

Sony used to make excellent quality goods, and were considered a high end company and very desirable brand.
I own a fair bit of vintage Sony equipment, and am impressed with it's build quality and reliability.

Sadly this is now not the case anymore, Sony products are now in line with the chuckaway products of their competitors.
I think Panasonic is the only quality brand left

Both Toshiba and Hitachi are now just badges stuck on cheap tat. (Hitachi are Vestel under the badge)
I think only Samsung and LG still manufacture their own goods now.

Mark

[Peter.N.]

I bought a Berec Demon from the shop where I worked in the late '50s, it was about the first transistor set I had heard with decent sound quality which could be improved further by replacing the OC78s with OC81s.

I am told that the Japanese companies deliberately set out to bankrupt British manufacturers by investing huge amounts of money in undercutting them by amounts which meant they were initially selling at a loss, once the firms had gone they had a monopoly, I can't deny the fact that they did make exceedingly good sets though.

Looks as though something similar is happening to them now.

Peter

[kellys_eye]

This thread illustrates precisely why restoration (and appreciation) of older equipment is such a popular hobby - and I suggest it is increasing in popularity too.

Modern equipment certainly shows what can be achieved technologically (thanks to the designers/engineers) but, as ever, the bean counters are the people responsible for their built-in obsolescence.

[neutronic]

Originally Posted by kellys_eye

This thread illustrates precisely why restoration (and appreciation) of older equipment is such a popular hobby - and I suggest it is increasing in popularity too.

There is another reason why older equipment is a popular hobby.
Because many of us are getting older with worsening eyesight and lesser steady hands and thus have to make compromises.
In earlier days my older colleagues used to asked me to look for short circuits on printed circuit boards.
But nowadays (I'm 68 yrs) I put two pair of glasses on my nose to check the print tracks and repairing something with SMD is completely out of the question.
I'm very happy with restoring those beautiful old valve sets with their good old fashioned wiring.
You can see it,sometimes you can feel it and as a good result you can hear it.
Jard N.

[Peter.N.]

I'm very blessed at 75 to still have good eyesight (with glasses) and a steady hand but even so I had problems working with 'modern' electronics when I retired 10 years ago. The stuff I cut my teeth on, a good percentage of which was pre war was so easy to repair in comparison. The Japanese TV industry brought us advances in electronics but they were initially still relatively easy to work on, not so now which combined with the relatively low cost of new TVs has virtually put an end to the TV repair trade which kept me fed and watered for 50 years.

Peter

[G6Tanuki]

Sony was - at one time - innovative (Trinitron CRTs, CDs and the first Walkman) and could command a premium price but as in pretty much everything technical, the rest-of-the-world learns how to make the same thing just as well but at a lower price. Just as Japanese cars were once seen as cheap-and-cheerful they then moved upmarket but are now facing fierce competition from South Korea who can make mid-range cars that are just as technically-sophisticated and reliable as Japanese but significantly cheaper.

Sony (along with Panasonic and Technics) were once rather well-regarded in the audio field: now their stuff is nothing-special. Japan is still stuck in a decade-and-a-half long period of economic stagnation too (rather like the UK in the 1970s, with the same sort of side-effects on their industries).

One thing that seriously hit Sony's image was their bungled Digital Rights Management thing of a few years back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BM...ootkit_scandal - this led to quite a few people treating Sony content with suspicion or outright hostility.
And now they have this little bit of a mess in their backyard: http://www.cityam.com/205945/how-muc...t-cyber-attack

[Brian R Pateman]

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