“The next cycle is actual innovation”, says Sony’s Welsh Wizard, Sir Howard Stringer, who said this week that the company’s financial woes have been fixed, the turnaround plan will be completed by Q208, and that its new products are bringing back what he calls: “The Wow factor”.
What products are these? Oh yes, they’re the flat-panel TVs, a music player with robotics technology and planned networking services for the PlayStation 3 video game console, according to The Wiz.
Well, well. Flat panel TVs, robot music players, and PS3 networking don’t sound very innovative to me, or even particularly Wow-y.
Innovation in the electronics industry comes from microelectronics, and The Wiz has taken a big stick to Sony’s chip business, flogging off its latest fabs to Toshiba, pulling out of joint development on 32nm with IBM and Toshiba, and 'significantly' cutting back on its future investment in semiconductors.
Of course, Apple can be innovative without having any semiconductor capability, but can Sony? Does Matsushita think it can dump its chip business? I don’t think so. Matsushita is one of the first to mass-manufacture 45nm chips.
Then Sony’s in-house chain of Maxim de Paris restaurants were flogged off. Where does The Wiz think innovation comes from?
Larva bread?
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