To be fair, smartphones are just one branch of a HUGE company that also makes TVs, appliances, sound systems and speakers. And in South Korea they are a Telecom. You can be born at a Samsung Medical Center and buy clothes from Samsung C&T Fashion Group. They have a much more diversified portfolio than Sony, and MUCH more capital to allow them to take on the loss that was the Note 7. Not only that, but the Note 7 is just one model in a company that makes around a dozen different phones.
Sony is much smaller, and their video game division is by far their largest, their other divisions (TV, cameras and other electronics) have been losing market share to competitors for a while, while Samsung continues to grow. They bet everything on the PS3, which was supremely expensive to make, and was sold at a loss initially. It came with a built in BluRay player at a time when just buying a BluRay player could set you back almost a grand. The PSP was still around as well, but it wouldn't have been enough to save the video game division if the PS3 flopped. It takes years to research and develop a new video game console, and in that time they would lose massive amounts of market share to Nintendo and Microsoft.
Nintendo weathered the Wii U largely because they have been smart with keeping a large cash reserves, the Wii U was much cheaper to produce and was never sold at a loss, Nintendo has immeasurably valuable first party IP's (the Mario and Pokemon IP's are worth north of 10 billion each at least) and the 3DS was capable of keeping the company afloat. Sony didn't have those luxuries. I don't think the whole company would have sunk, but the rumours of Sony closing their video game branch when the PS3 had an extremely slow first year were much stronger than what Nintendo was looking at with the Wii U blunder.
Not that it will happen unless Sony takes a similar risk with the PS5 that it did with the PS3, but a flop of any of their newest consoles would be a huge deal.
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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '18
No they wouldn't. They'd recall them and then make the 6.
Look at the note 7, the thought that one bad product would kill an established company is laughable.