Electronics giant Sony has been experimenting with a number of ideas the last couple of months, but the one thing that should get gamers more excited than the launched PlayStation 4 is that the company is focussing sharply on its virtual and augmented reality facescreens.
CEO Kazuo Hirai has opened a new avenue for the company with the concept virtual reality headset Project Morpheus, and also announced prototypes for the Lifelog wearable camera, and SmartEyeglass – touted as a competitor to Google Glass.
He said in a media interview that wearable electronics and gaming is something that Sony is actively going to pursue in the future. “(Wearables) have a lot of potential to make it a more exciting ecosystem. It’s not just the wearable but it’s in fact an extension of a lot of the product experiences that we bring to consumers today.”
But he concedes that it is going to be a long road ahead for all the players involved.
“It already is, perhaps, a very crowded market. I think the jury’s still out on exactly what the right wearable consumer experience is… We have a vision of where we want to take it, but we don’t know whether that’s the right one. We don’t know whether Google has the right answer. Everyone is scrambling for that right consumer experience at this point,” he added.
But one area where the company has been failing to make a decent profit, is their television space. Hirai revealed that if they decided to exit the television market, it would be on the grounds of some form of partnership.
“Not that there are any plans right now, but just talking generally, I think that the options we would pursue if it came to that would be some sort of a partnership with an outside company or basically getting some partnerships going in some particular territories,” Hirai said.
Sony will however split their television business into a separate company from Sony Electronics, to be called Sony Visual Products. In a press statement earlier he detailed how Sony was unable to achieve their goal of returning the business to profitability, as they haven’t made a profit for ten years in a row.
“Having said that, right now we are in the midst of creating a new company, Sony Visual Products, to make sure that the TV business is a stand-alone business.”
He also added that they would transfer over the functions absolutely essential for running the business, drive ahead with restructuring the sales companies, as well as the headquarters and indirect functions supporting the TV business.
“We intend to steadily reduce fixed costs and establish a new business structure that can minimize the impact of external market fluctuations.”
[Source – PC World]
