Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) has been on a financial tightrope for years now. Highly-regarded CEO Sir Howard Stringer continues to talk the Sony talk while ignoring the fact that his company's brand equity has finally become a commodity. Does the Sony brand really carry any weight in any product category any longer? Nope. Not in flat-screen televisions, not in portable music players and certainly not in just about anything else.

Sony (NYSE: SNE) is getting a new president. At the Japanese electronics company, the president holds the No.2 spot, under the CEO. What is surprising about the Sony move is that chief executive Howard Stringer will become his own president.

According to Reuters, "Sony Corp, facing a record loss this year, said chief executive Howard Stringer would add the post of president and take direct control of the ailing electronics division at the centre of its problems."

Sony (NYSE:SNE) put in new management three years ago to reverse the decline of its businesses, especially its flagging video game operation. It brought in the first non-Japanese CEO, Howard Stringer.

With the PS3 launch there was some hope that Sony had found its way back to being the premier consumer electronics company in the world. The product sold poorly, some believe because it was priced too high. Sony's TV business also started to fall apart as the prices for video screens began a sharp drop.

Now, Sony will post the largest loss in its history and lay off a number of employees.According to Reuters, "Japan's Sony, maker of Bravia flat TVs, Cyber-shot digital cameras and PlayStation game machines, said it would post a bigger-than-expected $2.9 billion operating loss this business year due to sliding demand, a stronger yen and as it restructures its ailing electronics operations."

It may not be as simple as that. Sony has made the same decision that GE (NYSE:GE) has, which is to stay in a number of unrelated businesses. Sony runs a movie studio along with a camera business and a financial arm along with a TV operation. Its game consoles have little in common with any of these operations.

Investors are doing GE stock to multi-year lows. Its CEO, Jeff Immelt, may suffer from the same problem that Stringer does. He has wanted to hang on to too many businesses for too long. Getting senior management's time to focus on any one of them for an extending period is impossible.

Investor pressure could not get Sony and GE to sell units. The bite of the recession will.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Howard Stringer's turnaround of Sony (NYSE: SNE) is officially over. The first non-Japanese executive to lead the company was hoping to fix what the old rigid culture at the company had broken. It no longer had the leading edge in making innovative consumer electronics. Its gaming platform, the Playstation, was losing ground to rivals. Its studio business was costly, and, in the view of many, poorly run.

Stringer was going to fix all of that, and seemed to have made a modestly good start. Then, the recession mowed him down. Sony will cut 8,000 people in the hope of saving over $1 billion a year. The "downsizing" is 5% of the firm's global workforce.

Analysts will fairly wonder if the jobs might have been saved if Sony had made any real progress on picking up market share for the PS3 and making the game division more profitable. The company was certainly hurt by the falling prices of LCD TVs, which is among Sony's largest businesses.

The fact of the matter is that Springer's renaissance at Sony took too long. By the time the recession hit, he was still in the early innings of trying to make the company successful again. Now, he has been set back, perhaps by several years.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Sony Corp (NYSE: SNE) CEO Sir Howard Stringer said in a recent interview that despite its troubles in generating sales in its first year, SNE's PlayStation 3 console should make a comeback as popular game titles like Grand Theft Auto IV hit the market. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on SNE.

After hitting a one-year high of $57.92 last May, the stock hit a one-year low of $39.52 in April. SNE opened this morning at $50.81. So far today the stock has hit a low of $50.27 and a high of $50.81. As of 12:55, SNE is trading at $50.37, up 1.94 (4.0%). The chart for SNE looks bullish and steady, while S&P gives the stock a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold rating.

For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I would consider an October bull-put credit spread below the $40 range. A bull-put credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of put options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make a 9.9% return in just five months as long as SNE is above $40 at October expiration. Sony would have to fall by more than 33% before we would start to lose money. Learn more about this type of trade here.

SNE hasn't been below $40 by more than a few cents at all in the past year and has shown support around $48 recently. This trade could be risky if the company's earnings (due out in late July) disappoint, but even if that happens, this position could be protected by the support the stock might find around $40, where it bottomed out in April.

Brent Archer is an options analyst and writer at Investors Observer.

DISCLOSURE: Mr. Archer owns and/or controls diversified portfolios of long and short stock and option positions that may include holdings in companies he writes about. At publication time, Brent neither owns nor controls positions in SNE.

Howard Stringer, Sir Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony (NYSE:SNE) does not think many of his executives have enough competitive zeal. Based on the company's results over the last several years, he may be right.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the chief executive pushed his management hard by saying "I'm asking you to get mad," Mr. Stringer said in one of his most strongly worded speeches.

Stringer's call for rally caps may be a bit late. Sony has lost many of its markets to more innovative companies such as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). Its dominance in video games has been ended by Nintendo and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). Hundreds of small start-ups like Slingbox offer products which have strong consumer appeal. Sony now has scores of competitors in most of its businesses.

Sony's studio business also faces trouble. Not only does it compete against the movie business of several other large media companies, but the cost of making films has spiked. That makes milking profits out of each release much more difficult.

Sony may be able to move earnings up modestly, but getting back to being the world's dominant consumer electronics company is a goal beyond the company's resources.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

You'd think we were in the midst of an economic downturn. Default rates on mortgages are soaring, and there is talk of a major bailout of people who are having trouble keeping up with their mortgages.

So how then, I ask, is it that people can apparently still afford to blow money on new televisions, video games, and all kinds of other consumer electronics knickknacks?

According to Sony (NYSE: SNE) CEO Howard Stringer, the shaky economy "has not affected electronics in the U.S ... Black Friday turned out to be very good for consumer electronics sales, and very good for PS3 (PlayStation 3) sales, PSP (PlayStation Portable) sales and beyond."

If people are struggling so much, why are they still spending so much money on PS3s and PSPs? Before we commit to a giant taxpayer funded bailout, shouldn't we look for signs that consumers are cutting corners themselves? Why are we bailing out people who are still spending on consumer electronics like drunken sailors on shore leave?

It's all very confusing. But for now it looks like, mortgages be damned, people still want to buy video games.

Since Sir Howard Stringer was named CEO of Japanese electronics giant Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:SNE), the company has had a few decent product launches and has hinged part of its future on the success of the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console. But has Stringer delivered all that Sony market pundits and investors have come to expect? In many ways, no.

The launch of the PlayStation 3 featured a much lower volume of consoles than was originally expected and Sony ended up recalling millions of notebook batteries that had problems with possibly exploding (It supplied the cells for Dell's battery recall as well -- the largest in consumer electronics history). Sony-backed Blu-Ray hi-def DVDs have filed so far to win over large amounts of customers -- probably due to the price and the ludicrous fighting with the HD-DVD camp over the standard. We all can't just get along, apparently.

Add that to the fact that many of Sony's products remained oddly steeped in the land of proprietary connections and memory card formats (Memory Stick, anyone?) and it's just amazing...no, make that not so amazing... that Sony has continued to stumble in the era of open standards, well-built products and timely releases. And Sony -- don't install software on the computers of your customers without their consent, ok? Please?

Things had been going well for Sony's shareholders after the appointment of Howard Stringer as the new CEO. But, then things started to fall apart, again.

Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) makes the batteries for the laptops from companies like Dell, which as you know are being recalled due to overheating and fires. Sony is also being damaged by concerned that its new PlayStation 3 will launch late. To complicate the competitive landscape, Microsoft has been updating its XBox gaming system and upping its marketing spending. Sony's shares have dropped from about $53 in late April to $39 yesterday.

Under Mr. Stringer it would appear that little has improved, despite the initial optimism of his appointment. The recent bad news could also hurt the company financially, with the battery recall cost hitting as much as $500 million.

Sony is not longer viewed as the engineering powerhouse it once was, introducing innovative products virtually every year. That mantle seems to have passed to Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).

With Sony on a spiral down, perhaps Apple will learn something about the road ahead.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.