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Apple vs Sony

Apple has just warned investors of a pre-Christmas profits fall. Competition in the tablet market is putting pressure on Apple's gross margins. Notably, Noah Smith has an interesting post which compares Sony and Apple. I like this comparison as I can remember Sony as the Apple of its day. Like Apple, Sony's rise to prominence was with a portable music device - the Sony Walkman (for my younger readers, the Sony Walkman played these things known as cassettes). Like Apple, Sony had an iconic and visionary founder in Akio Morita. Noah Smith suggests that Sony's decline was partially due to the death of Morita in 1999. Will post-Jobs Apple go the same way?

    

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