What are difference a few years makes… As someone who was absolutely smitten with Sony during the late 90s and into the early 2000s, it’s horribly ironic that I now lust after such “once junk” brands as Samsung or LG. And indeed that’s true: how many people would actually have said they wanted a Samsung PC or LG phone back in 2000?

Sony has become an absolute mess to say the least. It’s been in an eternal period of restructuring for over a decade now, a problem in no small part stemming from its gross inability to have accepted marketplace changes and severely clamped down on product pricing structure: those VAIO Z laptops were awesome a few years back, but who could actually afford one? Likewise Sony had an EL-panel television ages ago, but it was minuscule and cost thousands of dollars.

It’s actually quite tragic to look at Sony’s website these days and see the horribly slim offerings. The once proud VAIO line is basically gone, as is any semblance of genuine genius (AIBO!). Meanwhile, new reports show the mobile division severely tanking, something that will no doubt come as a shock to those living here in Japan where the brand is seemingly thriving simply because “its Japanese” and at the expense of “foreign” OEMs like Samsung and LG, companies that are doing comparatively well elsewhere in the world.

With all this chaos going on, does anyone else find it bizarre that any time Sony’s name comes up in the news it’s either for something absurdly unrealistic (see the pricing on its Walkman ZX2 or the just-announced Hi-Fi Micro SD card) or else just a flagrant mess of absolute incompetence (The Interview and PSN Outage incidents). As I’ve said before, it’s actually bizarre to think that a child of 10 years of age would never know Sony was a company to be respected and unrivaled shortly before their birth.

The biggest problem with Sony is, quite frankly, Sony. The company will try everything under the sun in its attempt to remain relevant and yet something is missing. Perhaps it’s the ability to market its products in overseas markets. Perhaps its the fact that every time you turn around there’s another “flagship” Xperia Z phone being released. Heck, maybe it’s just the possibility that the company lost all of its talented staff and thus is running on empty.

Some weeks ago I covered a story about VAIO Corporation releasing a VAIO smartphone in the near future. I still hold true to the belief that, if said product line were to actually outsell the Xperia series, it would serve as the ultimate smack in the face for Sony. If you ask me, the company needs a real leader that can finally fix the disease plaguing the company’s products and sales.

Bogdan Petrovan