Sony Corp., the struggling Japanese electronics and entertainment
company, is headed in the right direction although its comeback is not
yet complete, its chief executive said Thursday.
Kazuo Hirai told
reporters that Sony is now more nimble and focused under his leadership
which began nine months ago. Sony has lost money for the past four
years, and has fallen behind powerful rivals such as Apple Inc. and
Samsung Electronics Co. in profitability and innovation.
Hirai
acknowledged Sony had gotten bogged down in its sprawling bureaucracy,
and stressed he is making a point of personal involvement in product
development to make sure good ideas don't get squelched.
"I'm
shepherding several of those projects personally myself to make sure
that it doesn't get held up in the bureaucracy, or it doesn't suddenly
fade away in the approval process," he said at Tokyo headquarters.
A continuing headache has been Sony's TV division, now in its ninth straight year of red ink.
Like
other Japanese electronics makers, Sony is taking a beating from
Chinese, Taiwan and South Korean rivals that offer products at much
cheaper prices. Hirai said Sony will target customers willing to pay
more and won't get sucked into a price war.
The make of Bravia TVs
and PlayStation 3 game machines reports earnings next month for last
year's final quarter. The numbers are expected to highlight a Sony
midway through its recovery.
For the previous fiscal year ended
March 2012, Sony reported a record annual loss of 457 billion yen ($5.1
billion) amid troubles exacerbated by factory and supplier damage in
northeastern Japan from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Still, Hirai was upbeat, stressing his determination to move or "wow" people with new products.
He proudly held up Sony's new waterproof, full-HD cellphone, set to go on sale around the world in the next few months.
That
product, as well as the 4K or "ultra-HD" TV, whose displays have four
times the pixels of today's TVs, received mostly positive feedback at
the recent International CES gadget show in Las Vegas.
But Hirai
acknowledged it may take several years, or as long as a decade, for 4K
technology to catch on. He noted Sony's advantage in running a movie
studio to make sure Sony Pictures offers 4K.
Sony has been
criticized for failing to take advantage of having both entertainment
and electronics businesses. Still, Hirai was sticking to the old
"synergy" strategy, while making changes such as revamping senior
management and carving out alliances.
He pointed to Sony's
investment in Japanese medical equipment maker Olympus Corp. and joint
development with Panasonic Corp. in OLED, or organic light-emitting
diode, displays as the kind of partnerships in the works.
"We need
to be a lot faster in decision making. We need to be a lot faster in
execution. We need to be passionate about our product," Hirai said. "Are
we perfect? No. But I think we've improved significantly."
Sony at CES 2013