Sony’s CEO, Howard Stringer, gets his hackles up each time he encounters the question: Why is Apple gradually overshadowing the Japanese electronics giant? The creator of the iPods, MacBooks, iPhones and their accessories consistently delivers trendy gizmos & doodads that are user-friendly, while Sony sells music players, TVs, cams, computers and game consoles, appraisals of which are not so unanimous. Also, it has often been a common complaint among Sony users that even some Sony complementary products are not compatible with each other.
Apple's iTunes store has long made loading iPods a walk in the park, but Sony's consumer electronics and PlayStations have only recently started to amalgamate their offerings with those of the company's movie studio and music label. That's one plausible reason why Sony's products earn relatively narrow profit margins compared with the huge margins that Apple's gadgets command.
So Stringer went straight to the root. Three years ago, he hired Tim Schaaff, a top understudy of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and made him the senior vice-president for software development in Sony. Although Schaaff's job description required him to spend most of his time in California, he's so integral to Stringer's plan to re-establish Sony that he has a direct reporting line to the CEO. Schaaff's responsibilities have outgrown his position, and today he also has a hand in product design, licensing, planning, and engineering. "When we brought Tim aboard, it was an acknowledgement that we needed someone whose experience crosses multiple borders," Stringer says.
Schaaff doesn't come across as an agent of change. The 48 something Dartmouth grad constantly avoids the press. When he speaks, he does it very cautiously as if he’s addressing a mass rally. But at Apple, Schaaff showed a knack for translating geeky ideas into killer products. The self-made software engineer supervises development of Apple's QuickTime video-streaming format, which serves as the foundation of iTunes, the iPod, and the iPhone.
Stringer is clearly hoping Schaaff can copy-paste Apple's Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture into Sony. When the Welsh-born Stringer became Sony's first non-Japanese CEO in early 2005, he pledged to make the company "cool again." While Schaaff has made important strides toward that goal, Sony clearly needs to inject some zing into its products. After a four-year renovation, Sony is still careworn to get its market position back that Apple has snatched. And now, as consumers all over the world, especially Americans who were notorious for being spendthrifts, have transformed into tightfisted squirrels, they’re even less likely to buy the expensive gizmos Sony plans to unveil over the coming months. Schaaff’s integrated plan included selling Bravia televisions that connect to the net and download the latest Batman movie, Walkman phones that offer tunes from Sony artists such as Robbie Williams, and e-book devices that ask if you want to purchase that new John Grisham thriller. But looking at the global slump, one wouldn’t mind trying out the cheaper Chinese lookalikes of Sony. And for fun products, Apple’s the trademark. So, Sony has to think out of the box & make something that it can boast of being the only exclusive “Sony thing”. Just reminding us “It’s a Sony” worked earlier, but now the modern consumer has come out of being faithful to a particular brand lifelong & instead trying his hands at different brands that are cheaper and more cost-effective.
Buck up Sony & make yourself “It’s only Sony”!
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