Sony's last stand

When Sir Howard Stringer was made CEO of Sony (NYSE: SNE) over two years ago, he promised to overhaul the company and improve profits at several of its divisions, including the game operations division, which makes the PS3.

On the way to improving profits, Stringer ran into an exchange rate problem as the yen strengthened, hurting margins, and into the recession. As a result, Sony's profits dropped 72% for the third quarter. The company made only $214 million on $21.4 billion in sales.

While sales of the PS3 did increase by 85%, the game operations still lost money as the business continued to work against strong competition from the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Sony said that it had slower sales growth in its flat-panel and digital camera products. Its studio business did well because of revenue from several successful movies.

The news raises the question of whether Sony can ever be successful while it has so many cyclical businesses that range from consumer electronics to a film studio. Unlike most media companies which have an entertainment unit, Sony is saddled with margins for TVs that are under pressure from huge competitors like Canon. Its game console faces the same issues due to competition from successful rivals that currently have products that outsell the PS3.

Investing in Sony is investing in two companies with unrelated businesses. If it wants to do its shareholders a service, it should split the firm into two pieces, one which holds its content operations and one which has the device division. At least then, people could decide which "Sony" they want to own.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.