- Sony Corp. Chairman Howard Stringer's triumph over Toshiba Corp. may not be enough to prevent earnings growth from slowing
-While Stringer will try to capitalize on winning the entertainment industry's biggest technology competition in two decades, Blu-ray player makers led by Samsung Electronics Co. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. may challenge Tokyo-based Sony's ability to dominate in the $22 billion market for DVD machines.
- Sony's Blu-ray hardware business model isn't very profitable,'' said Morgan Stanley's Tokyo-based analyst Masahiro Ono, who doesn't plan to raise estimates for Sony. ``Even if it's profitable next year, we can't expect a high margin.''
-Mizuno said Blu-ray royalty payments are too small to boost profit, without providing a figure. Sony doesn't own the technology and members will share royalties, said company spokesman Masayo Endo, declining to provide figures or elaborate on revenue sharing.
-During the 2007 holiday season, high-definition players comprised less than 10 percent of total DVD sales in the U.S. at ``a time of heavy promotion and aggressive pricing,'' said Paul Erickson, director of DVD research at DisplaySearch, a unit of NPD Group Inc.
-Blu-ray's inclusion in PlayStation 3 machines helped Sony's format take the lead. Before the PS3's introduction, HD DVD movies accounted for 64 percent of high-definition format sales in the U.S., according to researcher Nielsen VideoScan. Blu-ray now accounts for 65 percent.Still,sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 game console, which comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive, have lagged behind those of Nintendo Co.'s Wii.The PlayStation 3 has lost to the Wii in U.S. sales in every month but one since the players were introduced in November 2006, according to NPD
-VHS didn't translate to gains for Victor's stock. The maker of JVC-brand products saw its market capitalization tumble more than 80 percent in the past decade to 70.2 billion yen, less than 2 percent of Sony's value. ``We urge investors to recall what happened to JVC,'' Atul Goyal, an analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Tokyo, wrote in a report this week. ``It gave bragging rights to JVC, but without a sound business model, JVC has been sidelined.''