Sony once was a company famous for firsts. The world's first short-wave transistor radio. The first portable television. The first stereo cassette player.
But those firsts are museum pieces now, sealed into glass display boxes and stored in a Tokyo archives room, available to visitors by appointment only.
Sony is still a manufacturing giant, but a troubled one, and its recent struggles to cut costs and match more nimble international competitors typify a lumbering Japanese electronics industry that is famous far more for its past products than its current ones.
(Washington Post)
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