SINGAPORE: Innovation has returned to Sony and it is going to remain there.
The chairman and CEO of Sony, Sir Howard Stringer, is very clear on how the Japanese firm is set to recapture and retain the technology crown. The strategy includes an option most companies, especially Japanese ones, would rather avoid - risk.
By making Sony the first to introduce to the consumer market OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) television screens, Sir Howard is proudly leading the charge into what he describes as "the beginning of a trend".
The determination to lead rather than follow is a risk that Sir Howard is quite sure will pay off, hopefully sooner rather than later.
"We didn't just produce OLED because I'm CEO," Sir Howard said in all seriousness when meeting a select group of journalists at Sony’s Singapore office.
"OLED had been in the works a couple of years, but had been discarded a couple of times as too advanced, or too expensive or too difficult to mass produce," the Sony chief revealed.
"But we made a decision that OLED was such a remarkable technology, we would launch it and lose money on initial devices."
OLED televisions are being shipped with a price tag of some US$2,500 for an 11-inch screen. The upside to having a TV monitor that is even smaller than what most enjoy on their PCs is the technology - a screen that is just 3mm thick and with a contrast ratio of more than a million to one.
"Essentially (with) the sheer quality of the picture we would solve the problem that would take large numbers to market, that’s the risk you take," Sir Howard concluded.
It has been decades since Sony coined the word "Walkman" and introduced to the world the idea of portable music players. Whether Sony can do that again remains to be seen.
The ripples from the 2005 appointment of Sir Howard as the first non-Japanese head of Sony have clearly not stopped, but this time it is with the innovation and risk that are taken almost like a move in Go.
"You have to make choices and whether you build an iPhone or Xbox, you have to balance technology versus customer ease of use, versus customer cost. All these go into the analyses on what you launch on the unsuspecting public," argued Sir Howard.
While at ease with risk, Sony is also partial to stability.
"Stability and certainty are rare commodities," mused the former journalist, who opened his round-table with the Singapore media reflecting on the constancy of change seen everywhere, from the world of politics to financial markets.
So when asked why Sony had chosen to locate plants in Singapore including the firm’s first South East Asian centre to manufacture lithium ion polymer batteries, the comeback from Sir Howard was simple, "why not be here?"
"We know the country and we know the people, we know the reliability and we know the stability," he said.
Apart from a reliable workforce and political system, the Sony head also ticked off simple and easy communication with total geographical convenience from Singapore as a hub between Japan, China and India.
The latter two emerging markets are clearly on the radar of Sony as it works towards its list of goals. This runs from doubling revenue, to getting 90 percent of Sony devices networked and creating a trillion Yen revenue business in VAIO.
Sony is also banking on a return to profitability in the arena of TV and games, as well as a consumer conversion to Blu-ray.
To achieve all that, Sony is looking to festive-buying at the end of the year. So if there is one wish Sir Howard could have, it probably would be for Christmas to come earlier. - CNA/sf