Sony Corp, Japan’s biggest exporter of consumer electronics, plans to look for a new president who could eventually succeed chairman and chief executive officer Howard Stringer, people familiar with the matter said.
Stringer would retain his roles of chairman and CEO, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. Stringer took on the president’s job in April last year after ousting Ryoji Chubachi.
HELP
Installing a president would give Stringer, who turns 69 in February, a deputy to lighten his work and travel load and offer the designee a chance to prove their mettle as Sony sets its long-term plans.
Kazuo Hirai and Hiroshi Yoshioka, two of the company’s so-called Four Musketeers, may be considered, one of the people said.
Tokyo-based spokesman Shiro Kambe declined to comment.
The choice of the next president may herald a new emphasis on electronics after a decades-long expansion into media. Sony has been unable to loosen Apple Inc’s grip on portable media players or fend off Samsung Electronics Co’s rise in televisions, while Nintendo Co took the lead in video-game consoles.
Since Stringer took over in June 2005, Sony’s stock has fallen about 25 percent, double the drop by Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average. The shares rose 0.8 percent to ￥2,894 in Tokyo yesterday.
Stringer replaced division leaders to spur cooperation and cut 30,000 jobs to revive earnings. Sony has been trying to boost sales by promoting 3D products and being first in offering Internet-oriented TVs that run on Google Inc software and Intel Corp chips.
The company raised its full-year net income forecast last month after improved results in the unit that handles PlayStation consoles, Vaio computers and Walkman media players. Sony has posted two consecutive profitable quarters, even as the yen strengthened to near a 15-year high.
PROSPECTS
Since last year, Stringer has been grooming four executives as he pushes Sony’s divisions to marry hardware products with film, TV, game titles and music from the company’s entertainment businesses. With the exception of Hirai, Sony’s “musketeers” are all engineers by trade.
Hirai, 49, who spearheads Sony’s games business, and Yoshioka, who’s in charge of TVs, cameras and chips, are the leading internal contenders for the president’s role, the sources said.
Hirai started his career at a joint venture between Sony and CBS, now called Sony Music Entertainment Inc, in 1984. He was named president of Sony’s US game unit in 1999. The executive, fluent in Japanese and English, was brought up in the US and Japan.
Yoshioka, the oldest of the “musketeers” at 58, oversees a US$50 billion consumer products group that includes TVs, stereos, DVD and Blu-ray players and camcorders. His group also handles batteries and semiconductors.
Yoshihisa Ishida, 51, who spent most of his career at Sony developing and marketing Vaio personal computers, now heads the TV business within Yoshioka’s group. Kunimasa Suzuki, 50, leads Sony’s Vaio personal computer operation under Hirai’s networking products group.
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