Starting a new threadon this; been looking for the thread on the Sony reorg but can't find it. Please move if there's a better thread to append to.
Fortune has an article on Stringer and the Sony reorganization. Nothing new, but it is a nice summary, I don't think except maybe a bit more detail as to what's Sony's long-term strategy when it comes to Kaz Hirai's new division.
Fortune has an article on Stringer and the Sony reorganization. Nothing new, but it is a nice summary, I don't think except maybe a bit more detail as to what's Sony's long-term strategy when it comes to Kaz Hirai's new division.
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It's all very promising, but what does it add up to? The real test of Stringer's game plan is a product that doesn't even exist yet, isn't a machine, and has no code name. It is a kind of omnibus web-based software platform that will use the power of the Internet to connect the company's rich library of content and devices, creating a multimedia experience for customers that actually rewards them for buying multiple Sony products and services.
The broad strokes sound a bit like an updated wrinkle on the concept behind the disastrous merger of AOL and Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500), but Sony believes it has two advantages that its rivals lacked: it already has a big presence in people's living rooms, and has a template for new Net-based businesses in the form of PlayStation Network, the online service that runs with the game system. The network has 23 million users, and in the U.S. it has been selling TV shows and films as well as music and games. An online service called Life With PlayStation, introduced last year, gives news feeds, weather, and camera feeds from around the world. Another recent product, PlayStation Home, is a virtual world designed to create communities among gamers. The team of engineers that designed PlayStation Network, like dozens of others around the company, now reports to Tim Schaaff, an Apple veteran who Stringer hired as Sony's first head of software development.
Schaaff's group and others are a central part of Hirai's new division, whose goal is to make sure Sony produces software that's every bit as good as its hardware. (Stringer constantly admonishes executives that Sony will lose its primacy in devices and electronics if it can't compete on applications.)
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