“After years of losing ground to rivals including Apple (AAPL) and Nintendo, the Sony (SNE) board voted today to make Howard Stringer the first non-Japanese CEO of the Tokyo-based consumer electronics and entertainment colossus,” David Lieberman reports for USA Today. “Nobuyuki Idei, left, and successor Howard Stringer on Monday in Tokyo. Sony’s board met in an emergency session where Nobuyuki Idei agreed to step down as CEO and turn the company over to Stringer, 63, who has overseen its U.S.-based movie and music operations.”
Lieberman reports, “The change would take place following a shareholder vote June 22. Stringer was also nominated for a seat on the board of directors… The ascension of Stringer, one of the media industry’s most erudite executives, would have been unthinkable years ago. Japanese companies rarely give such power to foreigners and often protect each other in cartels known as keiretsu. But years of restructurings failed to lift Sony’s consumer electronics business out of its funk… It stuck by its MiniDisc portable music players while consumers flocked to Apple’s iPods. And Nintendo has control of the portable video game market. But the entertainment unit that Stringer oversees has lifted Sony’s fortunes.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: In January in Davos, Switzerland, AlwaysOn’s Tony Perkins sat down with Mr. Idei and Sir Howard Stringer* and reported this little exchange:
Perkins: Well, in many ways Sony has always been Steve Jobs’s model for Apple.
Sir Howard: So we are also rivals, and trying to get together would frankly be a waste of time!
Read the full Q&A here.
*Sir Howard received the title of Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours list of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on December 31, 1999.
I hope the “Year of HD” wasn’t contingent on those guys coming through with some cool things. If it was, we can say g’bye to that.
Howard Stringer (as an American, I do not recognize titles of “nobility” or any other such nonsense) used to be the Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. This week, Dan Rather exits the newscast under a cloud of derision while his old Executive Producer becomes the CEO of one of the most well-known companies in the world. What a difference 20 years makes.
OH, and you can pretty much bet that they will successfully be able to destroy the Playstation name. There’s just something about Americans and game systems that have never gelled.
MDNMW but, as in but at least I’ll have a PSP to practice creating .mp4 movies on.
Can you say, “Carley Fiorina” with testicles?
Mr Stringer, like William J. Gates III, cannot be referred to as Sir.
As for the UK Honours system being “nonsense”, the nomenclature is certainly archaic, but all countries have the right to name their medals and awards as they care to. For every stupid appointment (such as Lord Archer), there are many people who truly deserve the recognition the award grants. For instance, Sir Tim Berners-Lee or Sir Clive Sinclair.
Back on track, I welcome Mr. Stringer’s appointment. Sony has lost it’s way big time, and Apple need serious competition to keep them on their toes.
And after all that, I now google it and see he retains his Welsh citizenship.
Sir Howard it is then.
Well, if Sir Howard is going to be a mean shark and not play nicely with others, the King and Queen of Monsters will just go find themselves another distributor. And Steve Jobs will find other partners.
Hm, I wonder if Nintendo would like killer video for their next game system? After all, the GameCube is PowerPC based, and seems to use firewire connectors, so they appear to love Apple technology.
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“as an American, I do not recognize titles of “nobility” or any other such nonsense”
Giving various worthless brown-nosers and cash-passers a meaningless title seems to be a much more benign reward than giving them a government job, an ambassadorship or a seat on the bench, which appears to be the American preference.
“Giving various worthless brown-nosers and cash-passers a meaningless title seems to be a much more benign reward than giving them a government job, an ambassadorship or a seat on the bench, which appears to be the American preference.”
C’mon now chap, most of this goes on here in the UK and EU too you know.