소니, Xperia 모바일 그룹 Vaio PC 그룹에 합병

Sony merges Xperia mobile business into Vaio PC group. Appoints its own guy to lead it

 

Sony has just announced a reshuffling that’s meant to focus the whole company on the newly-found ‘One Sony’ strategy, devised by new President and CEO Kazuo Hirai. The last few months have been interesting for Sony in the mobile space, as it has acquired Ericsson’s stake in their now-defunct joint-venture, and started rebranding its upcoming phones to Sony.

It’s pretty clear that mobile needs to be one of Sony’s main focus points from now on, and the new structure reflects that. Sony’s three ‘core pillars’ of its electronics business are now digital imaging, games, and mobile.

Kunimasa Suzuki has been appointed as ‘Officer in Charge of User Experience, Product Strategy, and Creative Platform’. He will be in charge of planning and design for for all consumer-related products. Additionally, he will oversee the mobile business, which now includes smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Suzuki was formerly the head of Sony’s Vaio PC group.

His promotion is interesting, because there’s no sign of Bert Nordberg anymore. He used to be the CEO of Sony Ericsson, and then in charge of Sony Mobile Communications after Sony bought Ericsson’s stake in the joint-venture.

Sony’s new CEO Kazuo Hirai (famously credited for much of the PlayStation’s success) seems to think that a Sony exec (Suzuki) will do a better job in the mobile space than Nordberg ever managed to. And with Sony Ericsson’s rather lackluster results over the past few years, who could disagree?

Sony’s transformation will be interesting to watch and may turn out to be one of the big stories of 2012 when we look back at this year. Or it may all just be nice-sounding PR, with nothing extraordinary coming from the company in the future. We’ll have to wait and see.

However, I do hope that Sony will somehow finally manage to release smartphones that run the latest version of Android. At least in 2013. Oh, and one more thing – drop the make-believe. I mean, really?