Raw Japan
Slices of Japanese business, politics and life
Two dimensions of 3D
An old Saturday Night Live segment once included this joke when Frank Sinatra was still alive:
“‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ is back in town, and sources report nobody’s interested and nobody cares.”
That line came back to me after Sony, once Japan’s “Big Blue”, announced Thursday its vision of an $11-billion 3D market by early 2013, with three-dimensional PlayStation 3s, TVs, Blu-ray Disc players, cameras, live broadcasting and — the historic staple — movies and theatres.
Photo credit: REUTERS/Rick Wilking
I attended Sony’s briefing that included a 2D video of its 3D world, plans for 3,000 projector installations by end-2010, a single-lens High-Frame-Rate movie camera (when previously it took two cameras to make three dimensions), and an end-to-end solution still involving glasses.
The plan was wider than 3D (it pushed back a 5-percent operating profit target to 2013) , but investors sold it Friday, and few analysts saw the technology quickly ending six years of TV losses.
Game on!
Nintendo still expects to make $4 billion this year and Sony to lose over $600 million, but last week may ultimately be remembered as a crossroads where each firm’s fortunes began to change directions, or at least when a 15-year battle for gaming supremacy again became competitive.
Electronics conglomerate Sony trimmed its overall loss forecast on Friday, while some of last quarter’s bleeding was attributed to what is now seen as its successful price cut for the PlayStation 3 console, jolting the PS3 ahead of its Kyoto-based rival’s Wii in monthly sales.
Nintendo, meanwhile, saw profit and sales declining at its earnings on Thursday with the main panacea a bigger screen handheld DSi LL console coming in late November, a move industry-watchers say is certain to diversify consumers’ handheld options but by itself won’t counter growing ennu-Wii.
On Friday, shares of each underscored investors’ views on whether a shrinking loss or slowing profit was more attractive, with Sony bought before its statement and Nintendo sold after its numbers.
Still, Nintendo, which began as a cardmaker and may have a thing for trumps, held its analyst briefing Friday at the same hour as Sony’s earnings, debuting the DSi LL. This followed a Nintendo price cut in September at nearly the same hour as Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai was addressing the Tokyo Game Show, an event the reigning game giant eschews.
Before an interview with Reuters that day, console war veteran Hirai laughed when asked about Nintendo’s cut, adding: “Interesting timing.”
Stringer yet to unite Sony factions
When a Welsh-born former TV journalist was appointed chairman and CEO of Sony Corp in 2005, he set out to destroy the factions dividing the electronics giant and uncover the synergies needed to grow.
Three and a half years later, Howard Stringer’s empire faces its biggest annual loss on record, slammed by a soaring yen, sliding demand, and restructuring costs.
What’s more, analysts say the maker of Bravia LCD TVs and PlayStation 3 game consoles remains as fractious as ever.
Stringer, a dual U.S. and British citizen, was handpicked by his predecessor, Nobuyuki Idei, who was charmed by the Oxford-educated former screenwriter’s wit and vision of technology’s potential.
At his best when poking fun at himself, Stringer’s verbal sparring with Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month drew applause and laughs from the audience.
“Stringer can unite Sony,” Idei had said shortly after Stringer’s appointment to run a firm whose interests range from electronics to movie making and insurance.
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