Sony now has its work cut out for it in repairing the damage done to the hardware giant’s image in wake of the PlayStation Network’s security breach.
That’s according to Frost & Sullivan’s vice president of business research and consulting Satish Lele, who weighed in on the potential long-term damage PSN’s downtime may have on Sony’s overall business infrastructure.
"Sony is now an online entertainment company and more and more of its revenues are expected to come from its online business as it has moved away from being a product business quite some time ago when it lost this game to Samsung,” Lele told the BBC’s Asia Business Report.
"So if it is not able to do that very quickly, I think [the PSN security breach] may have an impact in the long-term in terms of the overall business of Sony."
Lele predicts that Sony will have to invest heavily rebuilding its public image and restoring consumer confidence in the troubled electronics manufacturer.
"It’s very difficult to quantify. It will have to invest a lot in rebuilding this entire infrastructure, it will have to invest a lot in marketing and telling everyone it is safe again to buy online from the services that they offer. All that will really take time for Sony to rebuild again."
Stay tuned for more updates on the on-going PSN outage as we get them.