Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Household Audio & Video Equipment
- Listed
- NYSE: SONY
- Incorporated
- Japan
- Headquarters
- Tokyo
- Fiscal year end
- Mar 31
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- ¥13.0T
- Net income
- ¥1.16T
- Total assets
- ¥35.3T
| Fiscal year | Revenue | Net income | Total assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | ¥13.0T | ¥1.16T | ¥35.3T |
| FY2024 | ¥13.0T | ¥980.5B | ¥34.1T |
| FY2023 | ¥11.0T | ¥1.01T | ¥31.2T |
| FY2022 | ¥9.92T | ¥888.4B | ¥30.5T |
| FY2021 | ¥9.00T | ¥1.17T | ¥26.4T |
| FY2020 | ¥8.26T | ¥582.2B | ¥23.0T |
Reported fiscal years from SEC filings (20-F) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
The analyses
Standards War · Moat & Competition
The Better Format That Lost: What Betamax Teaches About Winning a Standards War
Sony's Betamax had the sharper picture and the head start. It still lost to VHS, and lost completely. The reason is the most counterintuitive rule in technology strategy: in a standards war, the best product routinely loses to the best ecosystem.
7 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
PlayStation Survived by Hiding Inside Sony Music After Sony Nearly Killed It as a 'Toy'
Sony's leap from electronics into music, film, and games is taught as a master plan to pair hardware with content. It wasn't. Its most valuable adjacency—PlayStation—was nearly killed inside Sony as a brand-damaging 'toy,' and survived only by hiding inside Sony Music.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Sony Stopped Selling Consoles to Sell Feelings. The Flywheel Hasn't Caught.
Entertainment is now roughly 60% of Sony's sales, and inside its biggest division hardware is already a minority. But the live-service bet meant to power the IP flywheel - Bungie, bought for ~$3.7B - has already taken a ~$765M write-down, and the synergy story still hasn't fired at scale.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Sony's Road to 61% Entertainment Sales Ran Through a ¥520B Loss and Four Losing Years
The clean story says Sony swapped hardware for IP. The real one is messier: a $4.8B 1989 movie bet, a ¥520B record loss in 2012, and four straight loss years - before entertainment quietly became 61% of sales.
8 min
The Cannibalization Choice · Business Model
Sony Sold PlayStation Games to PC Players. Then It Saw Who Wasn't Coming Home.
Sony's PC pivot wasn't a surrender in the console war—it grew first-party PC revenue from $35M to ~$656M a year. But the data turned: only ~13% of Steam owners of one PlayStation hit bought the sequel. Sony is now pulling back to protect the thing the cash was quietly killing.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
How Buying a Record Label Cost Sony the Portable Music Market It Invented
Sony invented the personal stereo and sold 400 million Walkmans. Then it bought a record label, and that purchase quietly decided that no Sony player would ever play music freely - handing Apple a market Sony's own engineers had built.
8 min
The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention
Sony Detected the 2011 PSN Breach Within Hours and Stayed Silent for Six Days
In 2011 someone took the PlayStation Network offline for 23 days and 77 million accounts were exposed. Sony detected the intrusion within hours but waited six days to tell anyone — and the bill for that week ran to fines, a $15M settlement, and a senator demanding a DOJ probe.
8 min
The Cross-Subsidy · Business Model
Sony Spent ¥1.5 Trillion on Sensors to Buy a Seat Inside Every Smartphone Camera
The legend says Sony's image sensors secretly bankroll PlayStation and the rest. Sony's own filings tell a quieter, sharper story: a ~13% slice of revenue built on ¥1.5 trillion of capex that buys something more valuable than a subsidy — the inside seat in every smartphone camera on earth.
8 min
The Ecosystem Lock-In · Moat & Competition
Sony Built the Tightest Lock-In in Gaming. Then It Got Scared of Its Own Open Door.
PlayStation turned a 76% digital attach rate and $846 of life-to-date spend per console into a real switching-cost moat. So why is Sony in 2026 yanking single-player games off PC to defend it? Because the moat is leakier than the numbers suggest.
8 min
The Turnaround · Decision Forks
Sony Relapsed Into ¥128B Losses After 'One Sony' — the Durable Fix Came in FY2016
The legend says Kazuo Hirai's 'One Sony' reorganization saved the company. But Sony made money in FY2013, lost ¥128B and ¥126B in the next two years, and only turned durably profitable in FY2016. The reorg got the headlines; something else did the saving.
8 min
The Turnaround · Decision Forks
'One Sony' Was Triage: Amputate the Bleeders and Let Two Hardware Bets Compound
Sony's stock fell from $55 to under $10 and it lost money in six of seven years. The famous 'One Sony' rescue wasn't a vision — it was triage: amputate the bleeders, quarantine the rest, and let two hardware bets keep compounding.
8 min