[IdeaHamster]

Sony makes the Playstation, Vaio Computers, Walkmen (well, not anymore), BluRay, Cybershot cameras, Bravia TVs…going to Amazon and just searching for Sony under electronics indicates that there are over 50,000 items for sale. Certainly some dups, but Sony has A LOT of SKUs…

…and they made $17.6B profit last year.

Apple makes the MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, iPad, iPhone, iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and iPod Touch along with some peripherals…

…and they made $17.2B profit last year. And some would claim that Apple has let the SKU list get out of hand over the past few years…there's probably some fat trimming in the company's future...

Two completely different corporate philosophies. Chance of merger: 0%.

[megablast]

There is nothing Sony could do to help sell any Apple products. They have a few stores, but nothing as good as Apple's stores. The computers they sell run Windows, Apple would not keep that side. They already sell mp3 players, why would Apple keep them both around? They sell crappy phones with ericsson, no need for that.

It would also put Apple/Sony at odds with all the other media companies, they would lose support.

[daniel-cussen]

They're also competitors. They'd have to get this approved too.

[tzury]

the recently released Google TV is the main thing though

[ahoyhere]

You could go even further:

Let's not forget that it's internally divided - so many horrible compromises were wrought by Sony because its IP division (movies, music) was pissed off by technical advances made by its tech division (hardware).

Sony has also tried and failed time & time again to make its own proprietary formats win -- Betamax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, etc. -- showing that it is more invested in "being right than being effective." Apple has won by taking risks on standards -- even when it was doing DRM, used existing standards.

Sony is, if anything, the Anti-Apple.