All eyes have been on Apple to reinvent the television set, but Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently confirmed that Sony, too, is working on re-imagining the TV. “There’s a tremendous amount of R&D going into a different kind of TV set,” Stringer said during a breakfast hosted recently by The Wall Street Journal. “We can’t continue selling TV sets [as we currently do]. Every TV set we all make loses money.” Stringer said that he has “no doubt” that Steve Jobs had intentions of designing a brand-new kind of television but said that “it will take a long time to transition to a new form of television.” Read on for more.
It has been widely reported that Apple will use its Siri voice control engine on its TV, but Stringer wasn’t specific on exactly how Sony would change the entertainment staple in living rooms around the world. Stringer explained to The Wall Street Journal that he’s ready to take on whatever Apple will offer with a “four screen” approach that includes mobile devices such as tablets and phones, as well as computers and televisions, but connected TVs are hardly unique. “I spent the last five years building a platform so I can compete with Steve Jobs,” Stringer boasted. “It’s finished, and it’s launching now.”
Sony recently posted its fourth consecutive quarterly loss and has recognized a decline in quarterly TV sales.
