The Quiet Reinvention of Sony

How Sony Transformed Its Business and Became Profitable Again

I’ve spent years writing about old Sony gear out of admiration for the craftsmanship and the risk-taking. The sense that a team built something simply because the technology existed. And someone at Sony said, Why not?

With ObsoleteSony, I try to celebrate that version of the company. The one that gave us wild ideas and wasn’t afraid to experiment, even when it didn’t make sense on paper.

That version of Sony is the one people remember. It was risky, inventive, unapologetically original. So when that spirit seemed to disappear, many decided Sony had fallen off.

Everyone thinks they understand how it unfolded. That Sony stopped caring. That it lost its ambition and gave up. But Sony didn’t collapse. It changed. Quietly and deliberately, it stopped chasing low-margin market share and racing other companies to the bottom. Instead, it built something else.

This piece traces the decisions and mindset shift that turned Sony from a struggling giant into one of the most profitable hardware makers in the world.

The real story starts here.