When Sony was strictly a consumer electronics company nobody could beat them. The Walkman, then Discman, were everywhere. But Sony also became a music and movie company just as distribution models started to become threatened by the move to digital. So while Apple was eating Sony's lunch with the iPod, Sony's music arm was suing it's consumer electronics arm to keep it from going digital.

That was just a few years ago but plenty has been written about it and you would think that the company would, by now, have smartened up. But you would be wrong.