Sony's angmor boss gets the sack, replaced by veteran videogames developer

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Sony's Stringer 'to step down' as president

20120107.131134_stringer.jpg


AFP
Saturday, Jan 07, 2012


TOKYO - Howard Stringer, the Welsh-born American head of Japanese games, music and electronics giant Sony, is to step down as the firm's president, reports said Saturday, while remaining CEO and chairman.


The move puts his reported successor Kazuo Hirai, a games and music veteran who is currently executive deputy president, in pole position to ultimately take over at the top of the company.


Sony is planning a drastic restructuring under Hirai to try to return to profit, the Nikkei economic daily said, pointing out the group is braced to report its fourth consecutive annual loss for the year ending in March.


Sony has been mired in the red with its television business losing money.


It has been hit by a strong yen, hacker attacks on its PlayStation Network, and both Japan's earthquake-tsunami disaster and floods in Thailand last year.


Stringer became chairman and chief executive in 2005 as the first foreign chief at Sony, and added the presidency to his roles in 2009.


The 69-year-old has dismissed speculation that he will be stepping down at the end of the company's fiscal year.


Jiji Press news agency said he had decided to shed the post of president because of the unusual concentration of power in him holding the company's top three positions.


Hirai, 51, has spent most of his career at Sony in videogames, movies, music and other software businesses, playing a major role in developing the PlayStation in the 1990s.


He was promoted to deputy president in April last year in a move seen by analysts as signalling a greater focus on pushing content to multiple hardware platforms such as game consoles, smartphones and tablet computers.


Stringer said last year that Hirai was an "obvious candidate" to succeed him as Sony's leader.


The company would not confirm the reports on Saturday, saying in a statement that "nothing has been determined at this time".

 
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Sony got in to the whole plasma/lcd Tv game too late... then tried to "revolutionalise" the industry with the 4 screen strategy.. They really live in a world of their own.


Sony CEO says company is investing heavily in 'a different kind of TV set'

By Vlad Savov on November 10, 2011 09:42 pm


Sony's TV division hasn't made a profit in eight long, barren years, but the company's CEO, Howard Stringer, is now ready to reverse that trend. "We can't continue selling TV sets" in this manner, he tells the Wall Street Journal, "every TV set we make loses money." His solution is to offer a new and altogether different kind of TV set, although in typical CEO fashion, he refuses to elaborate on what that might involve. He simply offers the assurance that a great deal of R&D investment is going into designing a new TV that could reverse Sony's fortunes.

Stringer's ambition to re-energize the flagging TV sector may seem quixotic when set against against the growing losses and tepid demand that everyone not named Samsung or LG seems to be experiencing, but let's not forget this is Sony we're talking about. When the company set out to upgrade its PlayStation Portable, it went and got a quad-core processor, dual touchscreens, and a whole heap of other enhancements to make the PS Vita a truly standout product. Its approach on the television front sounds like it might be similarly far-reaching and potentially just as exciting. We'll see.


The Sony chief also took a moment to address his company's broader plans for the future, noting that they'll be built around a "four screen" strategy. Networked services (and presumably content) delivered to mobile phones, tablets, PCs, and TVs, says Stringer, will be the core of Sony's drive for profitability in the future. As he puts it, he has "spent the last five years building a platform so [he] can compete against Steve Jobs. It's finished, and it's launching now."

 
This is good news. Sony is getting old. It needs out of a box thinkers to put it in the black again.
 
Ken Kutaragi should have been president when Stringer was appointed. Sony has been bleeding money in all divisions for many years. If not for the Playstation franchise they would filed for chapter 11. I don't understand how an innovative company that came up with the walkman, transistor radio could have fallen to this.
 
maybe it is a good time to replace the FT wif jipun kia.
hope the jipun spirit can cheong out of the crisis.
:D
 
If SMRT was runned like a Japanese company. A public apology would come forward immediately. Followed by immediate action to remedy whatever problems that has occur. Followed by mass resignation by the entire management team.

maybe it is a good time to replace the FT wif jipun kia.
hope the jipun spirit can cheong out of the crisis.
:D
 
Ken Kutaragi should have been president when Stringer was appointed. Sony has been bleeding money in all divisions for many years. If not for the Playstation franchise they would filed for chapter 11. I don't understand how an innovative company that came up with the walkman, transistor radio could have fallen to this.

Dont forget their movie studios. Spiderman trilogy raked in money for them.
 
he did well to stay so long as japanese ceo, much longer than olympus ceo.

well done, howard, while you are cutting cost and downsizing, you let samsung take over the world.
 
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