Max Troubles for Betamax

Sony struggles as its videotape-recorder market slides away

Japan's Sony Corp. has long boasted that it is "the one and only." But that confident advertising slogan now is beginning to sound hollow. The company that gave the world the transistor radio in the '50s, Trinitron color television in the '60s, the Walkman portable cassette player in the '70s and the Watchman micro-TV in the '80s is in trouble. In 1983 Sony's sales slipped for the first time in eight years, to $4.8 billion, while profits fell for the second consecutive year, to $119.3 million....

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