If as Sony goes, so goes the rest of the consumer electronics industry, it's totally screwed. They've just issued a grimtastic revision of their earnings forecast: Yearly profit outlook slashed by 38 percent from its July forecast of $2.4 billion to just $1.5 billion, and one Tokyo analyst says that "this is just the beginning of a big earnings collapse," in which Sony stands a "good chance" of losing money this year.

Part of their crappy outlook is thanks to a stronger yen, which makes exports more expensive, and its equity investments, but obviously the hard blow is coming from worse-than-expected sales of LCDs, digital cameras and video cams. Samsung and LG might fare better, but we're looking forward to Microsoft's earnings report today, since it might better indicate the health of the industry than Apple's. [Forbes, Image: Shaggy6Six6/Flickr]

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