Sony Spins Off Camera Business Into Separate Company

Sony has announced that it would be spinning off its entire "Electronics Products & Solutions" (EP&S) segment -- including its imaging and mobile businesses -- into an intermediate holding company called "Sony Electronics Corporation." From a report: The change will take place effective April 1st, and no, it doesn't seem to be an early April Fools joke. In a press release announcing the change, the Sony parent company outlined the plan in broad strokes, explaining that its Imaging Products & Solutions, Home Entertainment & Sound, and Mobile Communications businesses would all now be run under a new name. "Through the establishment of Sony Electronics Corporation, Sony will not only accelerate the integrated operation of the EP&S businesses," reads the release, "but also aim to optimize its organizational structure, talent and business portfolio, while further enhancing competitiveness and creating new business."

Sony Electronics Corporation?

[DontBeAMoran]

Didn't they used to be called that in the 1980's, because "Sony Electronics" sounds very familiar to me.

Re:

[mschaffer]

Probably should just call it Minolta II.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Beat me to it. Sony bought up Konica Minolta's cameras and people. Good outome: Lots of Sony resources behind the K-M expertise. Bad outcome: Sony's crapification of the stuff they may, "our way or no way". It'd be good to see them break away from the latter.

Just a re-org.

[Guspaz]

Sony still owns it. It's not independent. All this will do is shuffle the org chart a bit.

Re:

[0100010001010011]

All this will do is shuffle the org chart a bit.

So standard bi-annual procedure for large organisations.

I worked at a Fortune 100 company for a decade. I "changed" sections 4 times and never moved.

This will allow SONY

[PortHaven]

To sell Spider-Man to Disney...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop insulting the Dark Ages.

Not new or abnormal

[Etcetera]

Anyone who knows the history of Sony knows this isn't unusual. In the last 20 years there have been plenty of internal re-orgs for product lines and networks. Here in San Diego we've had SOE, SCEA, SCE, and SMSS (then SNEI, then not sure what happened). Only one of those was actually spun off to its own company (SOE, best known for EverQuest and SWG, is now Daybreak Games).

If Sony were *SELLING* off its hardware business, that would be different. And a big deal. And sad.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> If Sony were *SELLING* off its hardware business, that would be different. And a big deal. And sad.

Nah, I might buy them. Sony makes great sensors and every dollar I might spend on one helps support the legal prosecution of individuals by their music and movie business.

I can buy a camera from a company that isn't actively fucking over creative young people who are experimenting with remix artforms or artistic criticism. So I do.

If somebody knows of Copyright strikes or revenue claims from Nikon or Fu

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[Etcetera]

I can buy a camera from a company that isn't actively fucking over creative young people who are experimenting with remix artforms or artistic criticism.

Actively? Please tell me, with that uid, you're not talking about BMG.

Home Entertainment?

[tronicum]

The term "Home Entertainment" is pretty big. Does it mean all TV-Sets, Playstation and everything?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I would assume this means Playstation and TVs would be covered by the same group. I think part of this may be the fact that their TV department seems to have been caught completely off guard by the Playstation 5 using HDMI 2.1 as they still do not have a TV that includes it (my bet would be that the TV departments wanted to save putting in the update to HDMI 2.1 as a forcing function to obsolete TVs and have people replace them with new ones, so that the longer they held off on it, the more people would be

Opportunities

[stupid_registration]

Now they have a great opportunity to hire people that can make a menu system that is navigable.

What about IP cameras?

[Stonent1]

Sony is a big player in the security industry. At least where I work, they are our preferred source of IP cameras. New hardware failures within the first year of installation went down significantly when we switched.That came from when we had contracts to install hardware that they contractor made the camera decisions that contractors that did a Sony only install had no problems. Long story short, we now require all new camera installs to be Sony unless it's a specialty device that Sony doesn't have,

Intellectual property cameras

[tepples]

"IP cameras"? As in putting in video watermark detection so that you don't use Sony cameras to reconvert Sony's so-called Intellectual Property through the analog hole? This is the trouble with having Sony Electronics and Sony Pictures sharing a parent company.

Standard playbook for a corporation...

[Viol8]

... when they think one part of their business is about to take a financial hit. Hive it off into a seperate legal entity so it can either be sold off easily later or if it does go under it doesn't take the whole conglomerate with it.

April Fools?

[thegarbz]

I don't know why the writer would think a corporate shuffle in such a large company would be an joke, April 1st or otherwise. This is just business as usual for many large megacorps.

Sounds like SONY to sell Spider-Man to Disney?

[PortHaven]

Sounds like they are separating all their electronics into SONY EC, which makes me wonder if SONY is about to sell Spider-Man to Disney.

(In other words, is this a legal preparation by SONY to divide itself so it can sell SONY Picture and their media holdings to Disney, which would give Disney+ a boost, while remaining SONY electronics.)