Sony hasn’t been doing good lately. In the gaming industry, it has gradually been pushed aside with the inception of smartphones and tablets. In the world of mobile, it is no good either. As a result, Sony suffered an expectedly massive $6.4 billion loss during 2011. Kaz Hirai, the new CEO of Sony, has now publicly come out with his plan to reorganize Sony and turn it back into a profitable company.
According to Hirai, he knows about the losses Sony has recently suffered from and he takes that very seriously. He then goes on to detail how he plans to turn it around for the company. According to him, the key lies in focusing on Sony’s key businesses which include mobile, gaming and digital imaging.
Hirai thinks that Sony’s core strength is digital imaging and that although cameras, in themselves, may not be an industry that may grow a lot, given the popularity of smartphones, Sony can still make leaps and bounds in terms of growth and profits with the help of its interchangeable lens cameras.
Sony Mobile hasn’t been doing great either, in the wake of wild popularity of both Android and iOS devices. But Hirai intends to change that too. He has reorganized the company so that Sony’s cellphones, tablets and Vaio computer line, all are unified under one R&D and design group. Kunimasa Suziki, who is to be the future head of Sony Mobile, will be leading this group.
An interesting thing that Hirai revealed is that he plans to reorient the company so that the time between the inception of a product and its release will be halved, so that Sony will be able to roll out newer products, faster. As far as the gaming front is concerned, Hirai has plans of introducing more downloadable titles for consoles.
Things are not very rosy for Sony’s TV business which has become a major liability. Hirai confirmed the rumor that Sony will be cutting down 10,000 jobs and concentrating on LCD, which still holds a potential. However, the company will also be focusing on newer technologies such as OLED and Crystal LCD.
Whereas only time will tell how successful will Hirai’s ‘One Sony’ vision be, we can only hope that the company that was once a tech giant may regain its reign in the coming days.
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Halving the time Sony products take to market is a promising start.
That may fix the biggest problem I find with Sony Mobile products: last year’s components for this year’s premium prices.