Alternative thought here. Sony is one of the biggest players in music rights, regardless of whether spotify or apple music or Sony's own platform comes out on top, Sony makes bank on it. Perhaps Sony evaluated the costs of creating a streaming platform and figured it was more effective to stick to licensing. Streaming services are still making losses but Sony sure isn't with their licensing deals.
And in the film category, Sony owns blu-ray. Cannibalisation is a real reason not to pursue certain ventures. Blu-ray sales in 2014, when netflix was already established as a streaming service, were still above $25 billion. At the time it might have been deemed a poor investment to try compete with your own physical sales by creating another streaming service. Keep in mind Netflix doesn't even turn a profit in the billions these days, yet a declining blu-ray still makes more than $10 billion a year.
So I'm not sure outmanoeuvre is the appropriate word just yet, perhaps in time it will be, but Sony might still think its choices were the better ones and I'd probably side with them.
I get your point, and that kind of thinking is probably why they didn't go for it - understandably the risk appetite and innovative culture of a MNC is different to a burgeoning startup.
For the record, Netflix is now worth about an order of magnitude more than Sony. Should Sony have tried? Maybe. In a lot of ways they were better equipped to try but they didn't and now someone is gaining a disproportionate share of global eyeball time
How is Netflix worth an order of magnitude more than Sony? Their stock is valued at about 3 times more, which is not anywhere near an order of magnitude. That phrase is thrown around a fair amount to just mean "very big", it doesn't.
whoops mental arithmetic fail - you're totally right, not an order of magnitude more.
Still 3x is pretty impressive, and it's still disappointing (IMO) that Sony failed to launch a relevant streaming service given their expertise and interests.
And in the film category, Sony owns blu-ray. Cannibalisation is a real reason not to pursue certain ventures. Blu-ray sales in 2014, when netflix was already established as a streaming service, were still above $25 billion. At the time it might have been deemed a poor investment to try compete with your own physical sales by creating another streaming service. Keep in mind Netflix doesn't even turn a profit in the billions these days, yet a declining blu-ray still makes more than $10 billion a year.
So I'm not sure outmanoeuvre is the appropriate word just yet, perhaps in time it will be, but Sony might still think its choices were the better ones and I'd probably side with them.