TOKYO (XFN-ASIA) - Sony Corp is firmly on the comeback trail and will never repeat the mistake of failing to promote new concepts, the company's chief executive, Howard Stringer, told its annual general meeting here.
Sony, which predicts a sharp rise in profits in this fiscal year after recent hard times, pioneered the Walkman but watched distraught as US rival Apple Inc later seized the market for portable music players with its iPod.
'We have spent the last two years now rebuilding software development strategies,' Stringer said. 'We will not make the same mistake again.'
Speaking to some 6,700 shareholders, Stringer dismissed criticism of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console, saying the company had already shipped 5.5 million PS3s since its debut late last year.
'To be fair on PlayStation 3, the pattern of all the PlayStations has been repeated. We always lose money on the hardware initially, and we recover that money in great numbers on the software,' Stringer said.
'All the production problems have been solved,' Stringer said. 'We are making a comeback already.
'PlayStation 3's going forward will be vital to our future and we will succeed,' he said.
Sony, Nintendo Co Ltd and Microsoft Corp are locked in fierce competition in the market for new-generation home game consoles.
Sony president Ryoji Chibachi, who co-chaired the AGM with Stringer, said Sony management felt ashamed to admit that the iPod had overtaken its Walkman in the market for portable music players.
Stringer said Sony should also admit that 'Apple's relationship with the customer was very strong because of its strong software expertise, which is something we did not do as well as Apple.'
But he said the Sony-Ericsson cellphone, which allows music downloads, had been a great success.
'We have been working very hard, so that when the video Walkman becomes a part of the landscape, we will not suffer as we have done in the audio [segment],' he said.
© 2007 AFX News
