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According to Techradar.com, from a peak of 66 per cent of global sales in January, Sony's machines now account for just 33.6 per cent of the Blu-ray recorder market. Although it still puts it in first place, a couple of rivals are breathing down its neck.

Right behind says the report, on a respectable 32.8 per cent comes Sharp, with Panasonic just a fraction behind that on 32.1 per cent of total sales in July.

In terms of the total global market for disk recorders, Blu-ray snared some 40 per cent of the market, with the remainder of the spoils going to DVD recorders. The total value of the disk-recorder hardware market had been growing by over 30 per cent compared to last year says the report.

Perhaps winning the format wars with Toshiba earlier this year is proving to be not such a great victory after all.

According to the UK Financial Times another problem for Sony is the eBook which is a portable device for reading electronic books, which the company launched two years ago. This time Sony's competitor is Amazon, which has swept past Sony with the Kindle, a rival e-book reader that is showing every sign of becoming the iPod of this nascent market.

Sir Howard was not in charge of Sony during the Walkman debacle and partly owes his appointment three years ago to the recognition that new leadership was needed to pull the divided company together.

But the e-book battle occurred on his watch, after he identified the Reader as a product that Sony should throw its weight behind. So the ascendancy of the Kindle is ? or ought to be ? an embarrassment.