sony bank?
Sony Bank? - Sony is getting into banking now. It seems pretty clear that the three biggest Microsoft competitors in the next few years will be (in no particular order) Sony, AOL, and IBM. But this move by Sony seems pretty strange to me. Trying to convince an entire nation to put personal money in the stock market instead of low-interest savings accounts (as most Japanese do today) seems like a terribly inefficient way to pump up your own stock price. And other than the fact that Sony will use proprietary software instead of web-based banking (?!?), it is quite difficult to imagine how this could be a fit with their overall strategy. One of the touted features of their software will be the ability to show projected savings, portfolio, etc. Isn’t it inconceivable that Japanese consumers do not already have easy access to such tools? Hmmm…