Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Who were the winner of NFC?

iPhone 5 is allegedly going to equip NFC controllers in its hardware, and many people in the mobile phone industry are expecting that the era of wallet-phone will be coming just around the corner.


However it is well-known fact, but wallet-mobile phone is nothing new in the mobile scene in Japan.

Sony developed NFC chip in 1988, and named it Felica. Sony tried to dominate the digital money market by issuing its own digital money card called Edy.  Though you may be still able to see the logo of Edy at a cashier of major convenience store, Edy business has not expanded as expected.

At the same time back then, various mobile phones which equipped Felica IC chip were launched, but it could not dominate the market neither.




The most prevailed Felica card is not as a mobile phone, but prevailed as a card which is similar size and shape of credit card when railway companies issued the card.

Since then, this type of card expanded exponentially.

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So, the real winner of the past business of NFC was a railway company, not mobile phone companies, nor the device companies.

Sony was also a winner of this Felica business because it earned huge profit from the patent revenue. But the NFC standard that is to be equipped in the future mobile phones is new standard and Sony can no longer expect the reveue from there.


What we can see from the scene in Japan is that though new NFC standard is welcomed mostly by mobile phone companies, still other social infrastructure companies, such as railway, airlines, or taxi companies may find the business chance in  NFC and dominate the market.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Ranking of the most trusted consumer brand 2011; where did Sony go?

This is the result of the survey done by Nikkei BP, through November 8 to December 13, 2010.


(Details and analysis are shown in http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp)

No. 1 Google

No. 2 Uniqlo

No. 3 Panasonic

No. 4 McDonald

No. 5 Nisshin Shokuhin

No. 6 Disney

No. 7 YouTube

No. 8 Studio Ghibli

No. 9 Rakuten

No.10 Suntory

No.11 Apple

No.12 Sony

No.13 Nintendo

No.14 Windows

No.15 Coca, Cola

No.16 Muji(Clothes)

No.17 Amazon

No.17 Mos Burger

No.19 Yahoo!

No.20 Sharp

No.20 Meiji Seika

No.22 QP

No.23 Fuji Television

No.24 Seven-Elven

No.25 Cagome

No.26 Microsoft

No.27 Cup Noodle

No.27 Nintendo DS

No.29 Tokyu Hands

No.29 MisterDonut

No.31 Hagen Darts

No.32 Calpis

No.33 Softbank

No.34 Calbee

No.34 Canon

No.36 Asahi Super Dry (beer)

No.36 Toyota

No.38 Kentucky Fried Chicken

No. 39 Daizo

No.40 Kirin Beer

No.40 Yamato Transport

No.42 Nagatani En

No.43 Honda

No.44 Wii

No.45 Microsoft Excel

No.46 House Shokuhin

No.47 Nike

No.48 Kao

No.49 Nescafe

No.50 iPod

No.50 Televi Tokyo

Also, please refer the last year's result.




Sony went down to No.12 from previous year's No.4. Sony was originally known for its unique technology development company, but recently its brand gets rusted recently.



As Tsujino Koichiro, who took strong initiative to develop VAIO, Sugo-Roku, Cocoon as an executive of Sony and was former CEO of Google Japan, wrote in his book, it seems Sony is still struggling because of the internal power fighting that prevent the company to release truly innovative products to the market.



Former CEO of Sony, Mr. Norio Oga passed away on April 23, 2011. He was the last executive who closely worked with the founders of Sony, Mr. Morita and Mr. Ibuka and knew the Tokyo Tsuushin Kogyo, former establishment of Sony. After his resignation and since the helm of following CEO, Mr. Idei, Sony seems to lose its innovator positioning in the market.