Sony

The Sony Group started in 1946 by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita and is a huge, multination conglomerate that has a share in almost all forms of entertainment in the 21st century. Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of televisions, games consoles, video, communication (along with Ericsson) and information technology. Sony Group is further split up into  Sony Corporation (which is known as Sony Electronics in the USA), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson and Sony Financial Holdings.

Sony Group generated an estimated USD$88.714 billion, a vast amount of revenue. Sony also have approximately 180,000 employees worldwide, whether that be in Sony’s factories or Sony’s commercial stores that are placed in countries worldwide.

Sony have always been at the forefront of modern technology. Their Sony Walkman in the late 1980s, and up until the introduction of media players, held top spot of the easiest, most accesible music player around. Nowadays, they have their highly expensive Playstation 3 which has sold reasonably well, but below the expected sales.

However, among Sony’s success, their have been many flaws. These have mostly been due to awful advertising. One advertising campaign in the Netherlands was viewed as racist. Another example is when Sony put up a false blog about their Playstation Portable (PSP) in which they invented a teenager that advertised the PSP. There have also been many problems with the batteries of their Sony Vaio laptops. A couple in Japan had their laptop battery burst into flames, with Sony eventually being sued for damages. Next, there’s the case of the Playstation 3’s controllers originally not having rumble features. This was due to a case in which a company by the name of Immersion Corporation, based in San Jose, California, sued Sony because they claimed that Sony stole their idea of the rumble features of the controller. Immersion Corp. were awarded with USD$82 million in compensation.

All in all, Sony have provided the world with high-quality, high-cost electronics. In the current economic climate, will we see their sales fall further? Only time will tell.

Nintendo

This post is actually a positive post. I wanted to talk about how Nintendo have gone from strength to strength in recent years, what with the releases of the DS, DS Lite, and Wii – which have all become major hits for Nintendo.

Firstly, the original DS. For those that don’t know, the DS is a handheld console that has two screens, one of which has a touch screen, which allows for some niche gameplay. The DS debuted in 2004, and has sold almost 7 million units in Japan, and over 20 million units in the USA. This has by far exceeded the expectations of Nintendo, and it’s continued success reigns supreme over Sony’s rival PSP. 

The DS Lite, the superceder of the DS, has sold just over 17 million units in Japan, and almost 20 million in the USA. These numbers are quite extraordinary for a console that just got a slight update from its predecessor. The DS Lite has better sound, brighter screens and a suave, sleek finish in a multitude of colours. To date, the DS and DS Lite have sold a combined 84.33 Million units worldwide. That’s about 2 and a half DS’s for every person in Canada.

The DSi is a brand new version of the DS/DS Lite, and has already been released in Japan, and is expected to come to Europe and America sometime in 2009. This time, the DSi boasts two cameras, bigger screen, better screen resolution, better sound and a chic matte finish. It also comes with built in Internet capabilities, MP3 playback, various camera software packages and a Wii-style interface. This has proven to be a step in the right direction for Nintendo, as the console is currently sold out in Japanese stores, and the public are craving more.

The Wii is so far the best-selling home console around. The console, for those who don’t know, is an interactive console which attempts to put gamers in the game. This has thus far proven very successful, as sales, as of 30th September 2008, have reached 34.55 Million units worldwide. This is a huge achievement, and has outsold the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. Noteworthy, is that the Xbox 360 has actually been out around nine months longer than the Wii has. 

Nintendo continue to dominate the gaming demographic, and will continue to see the sales of their consoles rise, especially over the holiday period. I personally love Nintendo’s consoles, and I do hope that their domination of the market continues.

Presidential Election And The Future

Well, it’s not strictly business-related, but I’m going to be talking about the possible effects Mr. Obama will have on the political and business structure of life. For all those who didn’t know – and you really had to try to avoid it to not have heard this – America has it’s first African-American president. Many people are viewing this as a drastic change in American history and others are not so sure that he will do a great job.

Firstly, I’d like to say that I congratulate Mr. Obama on winning. I actually feel that this change will be a good thing for businesses of America. Hopefully, with the change, comes stability –  and with stability, comes a future on which we can build.

As many people now know, we are in the midst of an economic recession. For those who do not know the technicalities of it, a recession is two successive quarters of negative growth. This has caused the stock markets to plummet and all currencies have become weaker and will continue to do so. However, many people have blown this completely out of proportion. This is why I think so: the “market” can always continue to rise, but it cannot increase ad infinitum. There has to be a period in which the “market” comes down to a certain level, and hopefully rises again. This rise will hopefully be more than expected with Mr. Obama in the presidential seat, so to speak.

As for the politics side of things, we can only hope for the best. I too would wish that international relations will hopefully better themselves over time, and we can only wait and see over the next four years as to how Mr. Obama gets on.

Mr. Obama has also recently stated that “the country’s economy is my number one prospect.” Or something like that.

BBC

The BBC is one the largest broadcasting company in the world, surpassing Fox, CBS and all others. It’s broadcast in more than 200 countries across the world, and reaches around 274 million households which have it available, in contrast to CNN’s 200 million households. CNN is BBC’s biggest rival in terms of viewing audiences.  They employ over 28,500 people and have around £4billion available in budget per annum.

However, the BBC is often at the centre of major conflicting stories in the media. Recently, television and radio personalities Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, quit and fired respectively, due an incident involving the pair and a prank telephone call on a radio show. The two were immediately shunned for their “disgraceful behaviour”. Personally, I think that the media and the BBC have completely blown things out of proportion and exaggerated the matter. There are plenty of worse things that are shown on BBC’s shows, such as comedy sketch Little Britain, which, although some may find it funny, is often offensive and rude to particular nations or people. But the one thing that set apart the Brand and Ross incident is the fact that they targeted a specific person as their offense, rather than shows such as Little Britain which target whole people and ethnicities, which I still find wrong.

BBC’s financial plan and income is disheartening. They take in a massive £3,100.6 million in television licensing alone in the year of 2005-2006. They also take in £620.0 million from BBC Commercial Businesses and £260.2 million from the World Service, of which £239.1 million is from grants (primarily funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), £15.8 m from subscriptions, and £5.3 m from other sources.

The BBC has also been at the centre of other controversies, such as BBC Wales complaining that Wales does not get enough Welsh coverage.

The BBC does not cost a lot of money. £10.54 per month is charged to each and every household in the United Kingdom that owns at least one television. The fees can sometimes be exasperating, and with the funding the BBC gets, and the money they spend, is it all really worth it? For a major corporation, the BBC has made some stupid errors over it’s lifetime, often ones that are unforgiven. I also strongly believe that Jonathan Ross should not have been fired because of his role in the prank calling incident because of the fact that it’s a comedy show. They should have been given various performing clauses and exemptions.  Thus it’s not to be and a great entertainer will never be returning to the BBC. I say that the BBC should turn around it fiscal model and fire whoever’s in charge. It’s been a disgrace.