Posts Tagged ‘Howard Stringer’

Tom Hanks insisted he wasn’t at CES solely to promote his upcoming Sony Pictures release “Angels & Demons” but rather, as repentance for choosing to buy VHS instead of a Sony Betamax, so many years ago. Hanks’ introduction of Sony chairman Sir Howard Stringer got attendees laughing during a conference that has also included the pall of the global recession hanging over the consumer electronics industry.

Stringer talked about some of Sony’s new developments including Flex, a screen so thin one can squeeze it — and Stringer did. We tweeted much of the event (click here to follow us) that was held at the Venetian/Sands convention center, we’re headed now to the LVCC to catch up with CNN.com SVP and GM KC Estenson.

• Stringer: Oled tech makes screen so thin it will fold. Flex “could be the e-leader.” Squeezes Beyonce video. “Good thing Jay-Z isn’t here.”

• Stringer: Sony Web alarm clock to incorporate music, video, news headlines including, “from my alma mater CBS News.”

• Stringer: Intros Wifi cybershot camera. AT&T users get free access from 10,000 hotspots to send pictures wirelessly to blogs, other sites.

• Stringer lists the “CES 7″ initiatives including: Be be a service enhanced industry or face obsolescence & “Advance the shared experience.”

• Stringer: These are certainly challenging times. Our products need to me must-haves at affordable prices.

• Hanks is a hit as he leaves the stage. “I feel the evil forces of Samsung pulling me away. Don’t send me to the Casio hellhole.”

• Stringer about Hanks: “We’ll still be friends after the movie.” Hanks: “I’m here because you keep writing it into my contract.”

• Hanks delivers Sony-is-great speech, jokingly, begrudgingly “They write the lines but I tell the truth.”

Sony’s chief executive was quoted in a German newspaper on Wednesday as saying that the company’s joint venture with cell phone maker Ericsson must do better, Reuters reports.

“It’s certainly been a difficult year but buying out a partner is never an easy thing,” CEO Howard Stringer said in Die Welt in response to a question on whether or not the companies could go their separate ways.

“We have to work together again as we did two years ago. Or the joint venture will have to find its own solution,” Stringer said.

Sony Ericsson isn’t doing well in the U.S. at all, although it fares much better overseas. Recently Sony finally added T-Mobile as a carrier partner, after years of staying exclusive with AT&T—an obvious move given how the company’s GSM handsets work with virtually no modification on either network.