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Sony Corp appoints new CEO

By | Published on Thursday 2 February 2012

Sony Corp

Sony Corp has confirmed that Kazuo Hirai, currently the electronics and entertainment giant’s Executive Deputy President, will take over as the firm’s CEO in April, replacing Brit Howard Stringer, who was the first non-Japanese exec to ever head up the 65 year old Tokyo-based company.

As previously reported, Stringer has overseen a troubled Sony Corp since becoming CEO in 2005 (he also became President of the company in 2009, and Hirai will take over that role too). A strong yen hasn’t helped, reducing the value of global and especially American revenue, and more recently natural disasters have hit key manufacturing plants.

But Sony has also suffered as the wider entertainment industry has seen its traditional revenue streams slide, and – most significantly – as three competitors started to outperform the Japanese firm in key product areas, Samsung in TVs, Nintendo in gaming consoles, and Apple in music devices.

Stringer’s grand plan was to more closely align the different strands of the Sony business, utilising the corporation’s entertainment assets with its technology, but the strategy had only limited success. And while most of the firm’s problems were not Stringer’s making, investors have become increasingly impatient for some radical idea that can turn around the company’s fortunes.

Although Hirai’s background at Sony is on the entertainment side, initially within Sony’s music company, and later leading the PlayStation business, he has already indicated his first focus will be sorting out the company’s consumer electronics division, and especially the Bravia TV brand, a supposed cash cow that has been seriously underperforming in recent years.

Stringer will stay on at the Japanese conglom as Chairman of the board, though the exact nature of his role moving forward isn’t entirely clear.



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