Swot Analysis of Sony

Introduction
Sony Corporation is a multinational corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo Japan. Commonly referred as Sony, is a leader in electronics, video, communication and IT consumer products. They are into financial services which includes AEGON Sony life insurance, Sony Bank, Sony Bank Securities, Sony Financial holdings etc. Sony was founded in 1946 by Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka. The products are divided into six categories Audio, Video, Televisions, Information and communication, Semiconductors and Electronic components. Sony employs 171,300 as of March 2009 and their sales and operating revenue for 2008 was estimated to be around 7,730,000 million yen (www.sony.net).
Core Competency
According to Hamel & Prahalad cited in Masrani (n.d), core competencies are a “bundle of skills and technologies that enables a company to provide a particular benefit to customers”. For Sony the core competency is its Miniaturization of products.
Miniaturization
According to merriam-webster (n.d) miniaturization is described as “to design or construct in small size”. In the Electronics Industry small is always beautiful, fast and profitable. Miniaturization played a major role in Sony success. Sony successfully developed and capitalized on the miniaturization developments and gathered good rewards (Hess, 1991).   Hara (n.d) explains the height of success of miniaturization in the invention of Walkman, a music instrument which has totally changed the way people listens to music. This helped the company to gain a worldwide identity and uniqueness. This identification was unable to be copied by any rivals companies in the world. The miniaturization products include transistor radio, videotape recorder, floppy disk, CD player, digital VCR and flat screen high definition TV. Sony is able to stick on its core competency and is able to produce miniature products. Latest products include Play station, XPERIA X10 mobile into its product line.
Strategic Advantage
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