Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) is calling it quits with its ImageStation online photo finishing service, and is in the process of shuttling customers to Shutterfly's market-leading photo finishing service. Sony has said that ImageStation will cease operations in mid-November. No surprise, really, since nobody I've talked to even knows Sony's offering ever existed.

This is another case of an electronics market leader trying to offer a complementary service to one of its product lines (like Sony digital cameras), and that effort failing miserably. In Sony's case, it marketed ImageStation with its consumer digital cameras, when it should have partnered with Shutterfly in the first place. Market leaders are generally the best way to link your brand with a service that is synonymous with online photo printing, but in classic Sony close-minded fashion (think MiniDisc and Memory Stick), it wanted to keep customers within "Sony" services. Meh.

The company says that it is closing its ImageStation service to "focus on the company's core businesses, products and services," although that's probably just a way of saying that the lack of customers did not justify the continued operation of the service. Shutterfly beat it, just like the way Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iTunes music store bested Sony's "Connect" online music store, which the company decided to close after three years of trying to compete with Apple and others like Napster and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) music.