As Sony is labelled “junk” investors are tipping billions into Samsung with the market capitalisation of the Korean Company surging on Friday.On Friday Sony, who once dominated Samsung in the Australian market, saw their shares labelled as worthless as the Company struggles to compete.
Ratings Company Fitch expressed doubt in the ability of Sony to generate strong profits in the face of increasing competition.
Meanwhile, Samsung’s continually surging profits have pushed the company’s stock up 36 percent this year, giving it a total market value of around $195 billion.
Reuters reported last week that Fitch had downgraded both Panasonic’s and Sony’s ratings pushing their creditworthiness into junk-bond territory.
Sony Australia boss Carl Rose is refusing to say how he intends to compete in Australia. Earlier in the month Rose launched a new 84″ Ultra High Definition TV with a retail price of over $25K in comparison LG Electronics is selling their new 84″ UHD TV for $15,900.
During the past 12 months Sony has faced constant problems with several of their products which are predominantly manufactured by third party companies.
Over the weekend Sony announced that it will fix a recently identified bug within PS Vita firmware 2.00.
Subscribers using the hand held claimed the automatic save upload function kept failing.
Sony says the situation will be fixed “as soon as possible.”
Panasonic, according to Fitch, fares a little better than Sony, as Panasonic still “has the advantage of a relatively stable consumer appliance business that is still generating positive margins.” Sony, meanwhile, has most of its electronic businesses in the red, and Fitch said that the company “[appears] to be overstretched.”
Analysts see the decline of the two Japanese electronics giants as a boon for Samsung, which has grown to take a very strong position in the electronics sector. Bloomberg notes that Samsung is still rated at A+ by Fitch, with a stable outlook forecast.
The South Korean company’s rise has been due in no small part to the success of its Android-powered line of smartphones.
A recent analysis by Asymco found that Samsung’s mobile division is more profitable even than the whole of Google, which develops the Android operating system that runs Samsung’s devices.
