Sony: Piracy scares off investors from Philippines
The widespread piracy of films, music and video games is forcing many international companies to have second thoughts on manufacturing software in the Philippines, a Sony Corp. executive said."Piracy is the big concern and this is the reason why we cant do business here," said Hiroaki Kobayashi, president and managing director of Sony Philippines.
"I think its also the problem of other companies," he said, citing the widespread availability of pirated versions of movies, audio products, video-games and computer software.
He said this was why Sony would not even import copies of video-games for their popular Playstation Portable (PSP) into the Philippines.
Kobayashi said he could not say just how much the industry lost to piracy saying: "Its very difficult to quantify."
The International Intellectual Property Alliance said the loss to US copyright industries in the Philippines in 2004 was 139 million dollars. Pirated versions of movies, music and software are widely available in many shopping malls in the Philippines despite numerous complaints from companies and foreign governments.
Kobayashi said Sony hardware, however, continues to enjoy success in the Philippines with its widescreen televisions, digital video cameras and bluetooth headphones all getting increases in sales.
He estimated sales in 2006 amounting to 4.4 billion pesos (90.2 million dollars), up from 3.5 billion pesos in 2005.
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I couldn't care less. Even if they did, Sony usually distributes a batch of Japanese games here and possibly unplayable if you can't understand the language. That's what the Sony store in Megamall sold when they were still promoting PSP early in it's release. Most people in the Philippines prefer software in English though I've heard for some reason, customers in Hong Kong prefer games in Japanese. Perhaps that's the reason why Sony pushes Japanese games here? Well, Sony, that's not the case in this country!
ReplyDeleteif this keeps up,sony might kill noobz by shutting down their website!
ReplyDelete