Sony President Names The Brands He Fears Most
N
N
0Overall Score

Ryoji Chubachi the President of Sony Corporation and CEO of Sony’s Global Electronics Business has named the brands he fears most.

  Speaking at a press conference in Sydney Australia prior to the unveiling of more than 100 new Sony products (See separate story) he said that in the TV market Panasonic and Samsung were the most feared Bravia competitors, in the portable audio market he fears Apple and in the digital camera market Canon.

He added “To achieve success up against these Companies we have to keep focusing on Sony’s strengths. We are making headway in several markets. In the LCD TV market we have had a lot of success with our Bravia brand and in the HD (High Definition) market we have HD offerings across TV, games systems with the new PS3 computing with the new Vaio notebook which comes with a BluRay Drive, content, camera’s and DVD players”

When asked about Blu Ray and the high cost of media he said “this is a problem. Due to small sales of drives there has been small volume stamping of media but as sales increase and the volume of media stamping increases prices will drop”.

 Chubachi, who heads the electronics business, says TVs and portable music players are two products in which Sony must show it’s a winner.  A book on Sony by Japan’s top business daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, said the success of the iPod and the iTunes download service made Sony’s brand power “a thing of the past.” He added “As an outsider to the music industry, Apple acted extremely quickly,” according to the book, Sony Versus Sony.  

 Sony has scored in one category, the TV, with new flat-panel models that have commanded top global market share.  Sony products and technologies that are expected to play a role in the company’s turnaround efforts: – Cell: Sony is developing the Cell microprocessor with IBM Corp. and Japan’s Toshiba Corp. It will power PlayStation 3, Sony’s video game console upgrade set to go on sale in November. Cell also is expected to find its way into digital TVs, supercomputers, medical imaging machines and other products. – PlayStation 3: Sony dominates the video-game machine market, and the success of PS3, which runs the Blu-ray disk next-generation video format, is critical for Sony’s revival. A model featuring a 20 gigabyte hard drive will sell for $499 US, and another with 60 gigabytes will go for $599 US. Skeptics say the PS3 costs too much and won’t catch on as much as its predecessor PlayStation.

 

– Walkman: Apple’s iPod portable music player has been a decisive hit, and Sony’s efforts in digital music players have been disappointing. Sony is beefing up software operations to catch up. Microsoft, Dell, Samsung and others are hoping to dethrone Apple.