Kazuo Hirai to Replace Sir Howard Stringer as Sony President and CEO

It’s been a rumor long and coming but after a vote at Sony’s Japanese headquarters, it has been officially announced that current Sony deputy vice president and long time head of PlayStation, Kazuo Hirai, will be replacing current Sony CEO and president, Sir Howard Stringer, starting April 1st. After the completed transition, starting on June, Sir Howard Stringer will remain on the board of Sony.

Since his time as CEO, Sir Howard Stringer has seen Sony’s stock lose more than half its value. Though the easy thing is to assume that this was his doing, it sometimes goes unsaid that Sony could be in even a worse position had it not been for him. Under Stringer, Sony was able to close down my plants and end entitlement programs and divisions, something which is very hard to do and highly frowned upon in the Japanese culture. It’s also been the vision of Sir Howard Stringer to make as many Sony devices internet capable so that they may communicate with and other. This plan finally came into fruition at CES 2012 where Sony announced that their Video Unlimited, Music Unlimited and PlayMemories software and services could be accessed on more than 200 million Sony devices. Sony now believes it’s in a place to battle services like iTunes.

Still, in the last five years, Sony has given up any presence in the music industry to Apple and the iPod and they were once again seen as playing catchup to the iPhone. I would however dispute this as no one had an answer to the iPhone for the first two to three years of the devices life and till now, no other hardware manufacture has been or would have been able to go, toe to toe with Apple without a proper OS behind, which Google would finally provide. The bigger culprit though is Samsung who is in the same position as Sony. A company who makes electronic devices like televisions, computers and smartphones and much like Sony, relies on Microsoft and Google to provide the OS for their device. Sony, who once was known for making exciting laptops and television sets has seen the Korean electronic eat away at the companies TV business, while gaining on the likes of Acer in the laptop market, whom are all hold double digit market shares, unlike Sony who is still in the single digits. Samsung was also in the same position as Sony when it came to smartphones, having to rely on Google’s Android to compete with Apple and but has been able to make gain considerable market share, though their solution simply seems to be copy what Apple is doing with minor tweaks.

2011 was internally dubbed as the year of Sony and the year the company’s strategic plans would pay off. Sony was however met with huge losses, due to the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis that struck Japan which left many of the company’s factories damaged or offline for months. Months later, Sony’s PlayStation and Qriocity Network (now dubbed Sony Entertainment Network with services like Video and Music Unlimited) would be put under assault by hackers which would force Sony to take the service down for over a month as the company improved network security. Tragedy would again strike as Thailand was hit with devastating floods, just as the company was beginning to launch its highly anticipated series of Alpha and NEX cameras. The company has just recently been able to start proper production again, after having missed out on months of sales.

Now the 51-year-old former PlayStation head will be taking helm of the Japanese giant. Having grown up in both the U.S. and Japan, Kaz Hirai is fluent in both English and Japanese with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the International Christian University in Tokyo. Having been able to turn around the PlayStation division, one of Sony’s last lucrative divisions (besides Sony Pictures), Kaz Hirai becoming the new President and CEO of Sony hardly comes as a surprise. Many now hope that his dual-cultural upbringing will give him the ability to deal with the Japanese side of Sony which has primarily been focused on hardware with little thought to software and Sony’s American division which is influenced by the likes of Apple and Microsoft who believe in the user experience and interface. Mixing in his understanding of the East with the needs of the West, it is believed that Kaz will also be able to better navigate the more political and cultural end of Sony Japan as well, as he is Japanese-born. Is 2012 the year of Sony?