Sony is leaving the Car Audio market: a new sign of the inexorable abandonment of the electronics market?

The rumor had been circulating in the aisles of international trade shows; today it is official. In a letter dated September 30, 2026, addressed to its network of distributors, the brand has confirmed the end of its activities in the automotive “secondary market” (the famous Aftermarket market). The final deliveries of Sony-branded car radios and automotive amplifiers, award-winning equipment that made the industry’s heyday, will stop on December 31. This new setback for Sony is nothing like an industrial accident. On the contrary, it is part of a broad restructuring initiated ages ago, sketching the new face of a group once the undisputed king of consumer electronics (EGP).

The previous Vaio, the first crack in the armor Those who have followed the brand for years remember it: this withdrawal dates back to 2014, when the Tokyo-based company decided to sell its Vaio computing division to the investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP). Despite computers with spectacular designs that even managed to catch the eye of a certain Steve Jobs, the ruthless price war imposed by mainly Asian competition had brought the profitability of this business to an end. A decision that now appears to have been the first step in a long material slimming-down regimen.

TV and Home Cinema, the Chinese TCL in charge More recently, it was the brand’s historical core that was affected. In spring 2026, to the great surprise of consumer electronics specialists, Sony formalized a major agreement with the Chinese giant TCL to create a joint venture, modestly named Bravia Inc. Scheduled to begin in April 2027, this company leaves 51% of the capital (and therefore the reins) to TCL, which also takes over the historical assembly plants, such as the one in Malaysia (SOEM). With a global market share having fallen below the critical 3% threshold in early 2023, the Japanese company simply no longer had the volume to compete with the juggernauts Hisense and TCL. The gamble is clear: preserve the Bravia brand’s aura while subcontracting the complex and costly production engineering to its new Chinese best friend from Shenzhen.

PlayStation and the leisure industry: the new center of gravity The end of the Car Audio division is therefore the logical continuation of a gloomy musical score that had been written in advance. Consumer electronics cost extremely dearly in R&D and bring in less and less. The best symbol of the Japanese firm’s abandonment of the sector? Sony confirmed to Bloomberg at the end of September that it would be completely absent from the next CES in Las Vegas in 2027, even though the brand had been present continuously since 1967...

Gone are the grand showcases devoted to [abc]Hi-Fi[/abc] and tomorrow’s broadcasters. The Sony house is now firmly anchored to much more profitable pillars: the PlayStation division (the only “hardware” that is truly untouchable at Sony because it is the gateway to a very vast ecosystem of services), the still very profitable photo sensors for the mobile industry (with Apple and the iPhone as a prestigious and high-volume customer), music, film (Sony Pictures), and rights related to the industry (via Crunchyroll).

In short, the Sony engineering known and recognized for decades is gradually giving way to a catalog of rights.