Sony returns to smartphones with new models
Sony returns to smartphones with new models, Ruters reports.
For the first time, Sony is unveiling its first smartphone under the Sony brand Kazuo Hirai, Sony's new CEO, said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They were there to unveil two news Android-owned smartphones that will be carrying the Sony brand--Xperia P and Xperia U.
Hirai is taking over as Sony's new CEO on April, replacing Howard Stringer, and explained that some management changes has been identified, but that they have a long way to go.
" People have these lofty expectations that we'e going to have all he answers to all the problems the plague the world on April 1," Hirai said in an interview at the Mobile World Congress."We are not going to have that."
Sony completed the purchase of Ericsson's 50 percent star in the Sony Ericsson joint venture on the February 16--a deal that was originally announced last October. The newly renamed Sony Mobile Communications is led by Bert Nordberg, Sony Ericsson's chief executive from 2009. While both Hirai and Nordberg stressed that their message to Barcelona is that Sony is back in the phone business, Hirai said at Sony Mobile Communications would be integrated within Sony as a whole.
Once a stellar consumer electronics brand, Sony is heading for what it has been warn would be much bigger-than-expected $2.9 billion annual loss the fourth time in a row. The surge for red ink has put Hirai under intense pressure from investors and rating agencies.
Hirai told Reuters that he had identified four pillars that Sony wold focus on; compromising the core business for digital imaging and gaming, marrying mobile devices with other Sony technologies content and services, turning the struggling TV business around, and identity new markets such as the medical business.
Both Hirai and Nordberg agreed that Sony Ericsson had been hamstrung by having two equal partners which had slowed down the decision-making and getting products to the market. "50-50 was problem…I would never take 50:50 job again," Nordberg told Reuters.
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com