Actually I think Sony would have been (and in part still would be) perfectly vertically integrated. They were big in content, home electronics and hand helds. In the beginning of the last decade they could have hardly asked for a better position to completely dominate the electronics business, the way Apple/Samsung do now - but it was all for nothing. Instead of integrating everything, they just let their divisions keep doing their own thing until it was too late.
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Actually I think Sony would have been (and in part still would be) perfectly vertically integrated. They were big in content, home electronics and hand helds. In the beginning of the last decade they could have hardly asked for a better position to completely dominate the electronics business, the way Apple/Samsung do now - but it was all for nothing. Instead of integrating everything, they just let their divisions keep doing their own thing until it was too late.
They tried to "vertically integrate". Really hard. Thing is, they hung the hardware on MemoryStick and the software on ATRAC. Oops.