In the music and entertainment part of their business, Sony (SNE) has not been able to find its way for a long time.
It hasn't helped that they have been having a huge battle with their European partner BMG, over who's in charge. There is talk that they are considering dissolving their partnership.
Evan Wilson, an entertainment industry analyst at Pacific Crest Securities says "Essentially what's happening internally is that they're exploring all their options, whether that means Sony buying BMG's half, BMG selling their half to an external third party or continuing in its current structure, that's not clear. But changes are coming about.
"Now that software is the most important piece of music because it's digital and the transmission of the content is digital, Sony has been left behind because its expertise isn't software and other companies like apple have taken the lead," said Wilson.
This and their market share is sliding as they have only two of their music acts that have top-ten selling albums. Their digital music service, Connect has tanked, with only 3 percent of the market.
What makes it even harder to swallow for them is that they are the ones that created the portable music market in the first place with the introduction of the Walkman 20 years ago. They haven't even been able to respond in any meaningful way to the Apple iPod.
Even the recent merger of Sony and MGM seems that it is already in trouble, as it MGM has already dropped Sony as its home video distributor, giving the account to News Corp.'s Fox instead.
It's interesting that major news publications like the New York Times (NYT) and The New Yorker have been giving them really favorable reviews in spite of all of this happening. Most of these reviews are based upon their flat panel TV sets than the entertainment arm. If the TVs slow in sales, this is a company that could be in deep trouble.
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