Today in Connected Consumer

on February 1, 2012

Here in America, April 1 is April Fool’s Day. In Japan this year, it will be the day Kaz Hirai takes over as CEO of Sony, replacing Sir Howard Stringer, who will remain as chairman of the board. On some level, Hirai must wish it were just a joke. Sony has been reeling for years as it struggles to make its disparate electronics and media businesses add up to more than the sum of the parts. Hirai comes from the PlayStation division, which has been one of Sony’s comparative bright spots in the last few years, but even the PlayStation brand is looking a bit frayed these days. His first big task as CEO will be to make Sony’s $1.5 billion buyout of Sony Ericsson pay off by turning Sony into a mobile phone power. But he has a long road ahead of him to turn the rest of Sony around.

Please Don’t Let Sony Determine Our Wireless Home Networking Standards

Stacey Higginbotham on August 28, 2008

The German magazine Die Welt has scored an exclusive interview with Howard Stringer, the CEO of Sony. Maybe you have PlayStation 3 sitting in your living room or recall that Sony won the high-definition DVD format war with its Blu-Ray technology? In this interview Stringer sets his sights higher, on the domination of home networking. He says,

I set the target, to be achieved by March 2011, of a product portfolio in which 90 percent of the devices will be capable of networking and connecting wirelessly. It’s a tall order. Our engineers have to work across all our divisions in order to develop standards. This includes the consumer electronics division as well as the film and music production units.

Looks like Sony hopes to follow in Apple’s footsteps with a proprietary standards-based home entertainment platform. Read More about Please Don’t Let Sony Determine Our Wireless Home Networking Standards