I would say Sony's brand and the business tactics that go with it have done a poor job of targeting the professional market thus far. They bought out Minolta who had a decent professional system with the A-mount that Sony largely failed to support in favour of targeting consumer electronics with "eye catching" new products.
No, they just chose to play the long game rather than the short game.
When Sony decided to pursue the still camera industry, they had two choices.
They could have gone with what they got from Minolta - an old system designed for the film days, with lenses not up to taking advantage of modern, high-resolution sensors and an SLR-based AF system wel behind what Nikon and Canon had already produced. This would have seen them starting from well behind in the race, butting heads directly with the two frontrunners in their area of greatest strength and trying to capture an already-established market. Not really a winning strategy.
Instead, they decided to capitalise on their strengths - electronics - while making use of Minolta's (and Zeiss's) experience in optics, without necessarily carrying over old and outdated designs just because they already existed. They built a first-generation car rather than a better horse-drawn carriage. They realised that, while SLR systems were established and effective technologies, they had certain hard limitations that could never be bypassed in a mechano-optical system and would, eventually, likely be displaced by mirrorless, through-the-sensor systems. In doing so, they would start off small (as they would had they pursued the SLR route) but on even ground with the market leaders - and, importantly, could capitalise on their vast experience with electronics and video cameras, taking advantage of the capabilities of their Exmor sensor while Canon was hobbled in certain areas by low-ISO performance and making use of the short flange distance possible on a mirrorless camera to negate the lens advantage of the big players, at least with non-action shooters (here in Australia, Sony was giving out a Metabones adapter with each A7r or A7 body sold). They essentially created a new market, initially out of those for whom SLR systems were poorly suited - those who needed great image quality, but did not need the AF capabilities of an SLR system and could benefit from features only possible from a through-the-sensor approach - capturing these first, while working on improving their AF and other features to later expand their audience. Since the initial A7r, they've been working hard on improving their AF and lens lineup, while maintaining their superiority in sensor technology. They may not have matched Canon/Nikon's action AF capabilities yet, but even the current second-generation, miniature-size system works well for all non-action, slow-moving subjects. When - and it's a case of when, not if - they catch up with the action cameras, they will have a system that can do everything the SLRs can, plus more (tracking eyes, intelligent subject recognition and many other AI-based focus technologies just aren't feasible without a through-the-sensor AF approach), while the others will barely have an AF system that works without a mirror. Then Sony becomes the market leader, while Canon and Nikon become the dinosaurs - the IBM, Kodak and Yahoo - of the camera world. It's a 10- to 15-year game, not a 5-year game, and, so far, Sony appear to be doing very well.
