Samsung Is the New Sony

OPINION PIECE
By Alice Hill

Yesterday I wrote something about Samsung being on fire and by this morning the NY Times had a piece on how Samsung was becoming the new Sony. Usually I hate those types of articles declaring something the new black or whatever, but in this case, what I love about what is happening over at Samsung is that you can literally feel the transformation in the actual products. The whole company seems to be bubbling up new innovations from high- end camera phones to amazingly affordable quality flat-panel computer screens, to record-breaking High definition LCD TVs.

This does not happen overnight, which is a testament to Samsung's strategy to keep almost a quarter of its staff dedicated to research and development. Sony meanwhile has been hampered by a heavy handed top-down bureaucracy that has sent its stock price down 75%, and it has picked a media leader as CEO at a time when Samsung operates 15 labs in countries all over the world. To add insult to injury, this Monday the Sony board demoted the engineer responsible for inventing the PlayStation.

There are not many companies that can provide the sheer breadth of products that a Samsung or Sony can. For every Playstation there is a competitor somewhere dreaming up the iPod or a better display technology. Sony may never regain the day when it challenged its staff to become a "factory of ideas" but for now, here's to Samsung for an impressive job well done.

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