If there’s been one complaint my contacts inside large CE companies have had, career-wise, it’s been the inability to rise far in the hierarchy. While there are clear exceptions to this rule, the complaint has always been that succeeding in Asian companies has been contingent on (literally) speaking the language and knowing the rules of the road, as it were, culturally.
When Sir Howard Stringer took the reins at Sony, it looked like this tendency had been bucked. However, with the appointment of Kazuo Hirai, it looks like Sony is going back to the old ways – but why? → Read More
You can’t believe everything you read, nor can you trust everything you hear on TV. Especially if it sounds something like “four out of five people choose LG Cinema 3D over Sony and Samsung for overall 3D experience.”
Apparently the Better Business Bureau (more specifically the National Advertising Division) “has recommended that LG Electronics USA discontinue advertising claims made for the company’s Cinema 3D Television and 3D glasses.”
Back in June of 2011, LG sent out a press release claiming that four out of five customers prefer LG Cinema 3D television over Sony and Samsung in a number of different categories including brightness, color, picture quality, glasses, and overall 3D experience. The research was done by a company called Morpace Inc., which tested the TVs at their default settings without any branding shown. → Read More
In the market for a new point and shoot? Didn’t think so. Why don’t you take a gander at the new Sony shooters anyway? → Read More
More news on the Sony-Olympus alliance that’s supposed to be announced soon: Japan’s biggest business daily The Nikkei is reporting today that big S is interested in purchasing a stake as large as “20%-30%” in its potential, scandal-hit partner (that would be up from the 0.03% Sony currently owns).
The capital and business alliance would be mainly aimed at bringing together Sony’s strength in imaging sensor technology with Olympus’ expertise in endoscopes and other medical equipment. → Read More
Sony has announced a new line of image sensors that will, in all likelihood, end up in dozens of smartphone models. The improvement is not in megapixels, which have more or less hit a ceiling, but in the actual layout of the light-sensitive wells that make up the pixels in the image.
The new sensors have, in addition to the usual red, green, and blue-filtered pixels, an unfiltered pixel element as well that will accept any wavelength of light. It can’t be used to determine color, but it will add (they say) to both sensitivity and brightness. Essentially what they’re doing is including a hard luminance-detecting element. This is good, much more accurate than taking the average from the RGB elements, and should in fact make low-light photography significantly better. → Read More
It would be a tie-up between two giants: Diamond Weekly, a major Japanese business journal, is reporting [JP] on its website today that scandal-hit Olympus is about to ink a capital and business alliance deal with Sony. Olympus has been under fire for months, after it was revealed the company has covered up large losses for the past 20 years.
At some point, Olympus was in danger of getting de-listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but it’s now on a 3-year “probation” that requires the company to improve governance. According to Diamond, Olympus’ top management has been consulting with various electronics companies but chose Sony as the best partner to help get it out of one the biggest corporate scandals in Japanese history. → Read More
Smartphone maker Sony Ericsson this morning posted a pre-tax loss of 247 million euros ($318 million) in the fourth quarter of 2011, after reporting a profit of 31 million euros in Q3 2011. The company, a 50:50 joint-venture between Sony and Ericsson, blames “intense competition”, “price erosion” and effects from the flooding in Thailand as some of the main drivers for the drop.
Sales for the quarter were approximately 1.3 billion euros, down 16 percent year-on-year. → Read More
The Playstation Vita handheld system, unveiled at E3 last year, went on sale just before the holidays in Japan. It saw serious sales: around 325,000 units (500,000 by Sony’s reckoning) were sold in its opening week. Naturally numbers tend to drop after the initial rush, and the next week saw healthy sales of around 72,000. But The numbers kept decreasing, and it is now reported that for the week ending January 15, the new device sold only 18,361 units, not including online sales. That’s less than the PSP. → Read More
Sometimes you just need a file transferred onto a flash drive quickly. Enter The Sony MicroVault Mach. These boys are fast. Some would say SuperSpeed fast. → Read More
Apple users probably have more than enough media on their iDevices to keep them entertained on the go, but Sony Network Entertainment President Tim Schaaff thinks there’s room for another media service on iOS. According to VentureBeat, the company’s Music Unlimited streaming service will land on iOS some time in Q1 2012.
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Sony Computer Entertainment reported some solid sales numbers for its various PlayStation systems for the past holiday season today. Sony says that they moved a total of 6.5 million PlayStation 2/3/PSP/Vita units worldwide (Sony defines “holiday season” as between November 21 and January 5 in Asia, November 21 through December 31 in America, and November 18 through December 31 in Europe). → Read More
Today at Sony’s CES 2012 press conference, the company unveiled several PC concepts that are, well, just concepts. Kazuo Hirai took to the massive Sony stage deep within the Las Vegas Convention center and talked about the convergence of TV and computers. But no one cares about that marketing nonsense. It was the concepts they flashed on the screen that got everyone excited.
But don’t expect these products to hit the market. Companies are not supposed to sell concepts. They’re concepts, not products. → Read More
HP has upped the ultrabook ante with a glass-backed HP laptop that looks a bit like a MacBook and a lot like the future of HP trade dress. The HD screen displays 1600×900 pixels and includes HDMI out, Ethernet, USB 3.0, and mini Displayport ports.
The glass on the back of the laptop is Gorilla Glass, which means it probably won’t break if you drop it. It includes a fat 128GB SSD drive for $1,400 and an optional 256GB upgrade. It runs a Core i5 or i7 processor and ships in February.
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Now that most of our smartphones can take crisp images and stunning video, the digital imaging sector is having a tough time holding on to its market share. Still, a few players are up for the challenge, including Sony which has today announced the latest in its line of Bloggie pocket cams: Bloggie Live and Bloggie Sport. → Read More
Sony’s really looking to give their Walkman line of mp3 players a shot in the arm with their newest addition to the lineup. Dubbed the Walkman Z1000, it’s Sony’s first Android-powered music player and it’s gunning to give Apple and Samsung a run for their money. → Read More
Not content to pull back the curtains on just one handset today, news of Sony’s new Xperia S handset has started to make round ahead of Sony’s big Las Vegas press conference. → Read More
You wish you were here.
You pretend that you don’t want to be here because, granted, we’ve been on our feet since the crack of dawn, have been fighting MiFi and WiFi connections like we’re getting paid for it, and haven’t eaten the best food thus far. But none of those tedious little annoyances matter in a moment like this: Sony’s press conference is just seconds away. It kicks off at 5:00pm PST and should last an hour. Tune in. Sony knows how to put on a show. → Read More
Big news from Sony today: according to a report just published by Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai, currently the company’s Executive Deputy President, will become president as early as April this year. Hirai doubles as the Chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment.
The move doesn’t really come as a big surprise: in March last year, current president Howard Stringer called Hirai the “leading candidate” in the race for the next CEO. If the Nikkei report is to be believed, Stringer will stay on board as Sony’s Chairman and CEO. → Read More
Are you ready for yet another memory card format? Dubbed XQD, the medium was first announced by Sandisk, Sony and Nikon in November 2010. And after the the CompactFlash Association finalized the specifications last month, Sony took the wraps off the world’s first XQD cards today.
Two versions of the card will be available, in addition to an XQD-compatible card reader (USB 3.0) and an ExpressCard Adapter. → Read More
Japan’s video game industry is the world’s second biggest (after the US), but it’s on a downward streak for the fifth consecutive year. Based on sales, the country’s video game industry has contracted by as much as 8% year-on-year, Japan’s biggest gaming magazine Famitsu is reporting [JP].
Between December 27, 2010 and December 25, 2011, Japanese game companies generated US$5.9 billion in sales. The Famitsu says that sales from hardware makers actually went up 2.4% (thanks to the launch of the 3DS and PlayStation Vita) to reach US$2.3 billion. Software revenues in Japan dropped 13.7% to US$3.6 billion last year. → Read More
