On April 1st of this year, Kaz Hirai will become the executive deputy president of Sony’s new consumer electronics division in a move to help further streamline Sony’s services and help keep the compony on the offensive against main rivals like Apple, Nintendo and Samsung. During much of the 2000’s, Sony with then and current CEO Sir Howard Stringer played catchup to rival companies, when Sony slowly making the shift from the traditional analog company that they were to a more digital based system. Mr. Stringer during this time helped streamline and slim down Sony by cutting many over lapping jobs and shut down factories and facilities that could be merged with other parts of the company.

 

“It’s a sign that Sony has exited the crisis mode that it’s been in since the Lehman shock. It can now move on from talk of restructuring to growth,” said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co Ltd.

 

Of course as noted, cutting costs is only part of the solution. Sony had to make sure that they were a digital company with modern offerings in order to compete and with Kaz Hirai at the helm, Sony hopes to do that. Part of this restructuring will be to create two divisions out of Sony. Mr. Hirai will lead one group which will account for 60% of Sony and include consumer products and services and accounting. The other 40% will be left to Hiroshi Yoshioka who be controlling the business to business areas such as semiconductors, batteries and other key components.

 “In his current role, Mr. Hirai has successfully led the turnaround of the games business,” Sony said in a statement. 

Those in the gaming community will know Hirai who has led the US PlayStation division in the past and helped the company unveil and launch products like the PS2, PSP, PS3 and most recently, the much anticipated NGP. Since then, Hirai has been promoted from the US PlayStation division to PlayStation worldwide, helping over see all aspects of the PlayStation family. Now Hirai will lead all of Sony’s consumer offerings in hopes that he will be able to offer the same turn around to the entire company, that the PlayStation division saw under his control.

 “The board and I have talked about succession planning and this is the first step.We have not made a final decision,” Stringer told a news conference Thursday.

“This is an opportunity for the board to watch Hirai san and judge his performance. There may be other candidates, but he has a leadership position,” Stringer said. 

Hirai is expected to take over the helm of Sony and become CEO in 2013 when Sir Howard Stringer looks to make an exit.