Sony reveals cunning plan for next two years

Convergence

Sony Group has published a document outlining how it intends to improve its performance over the next couple of years, including how it’s going to start making money out of TVs and the PlayStation again.

Its latest financials (pdf) revealed that, while its TV and game businesses were losing money, its Vaio PC division delivering a healthy profit. So Sony appears to have joined the dots and decided convergence is the way forward and has adopted the mission statement: “To be the leading global provider of networked consumer electronics and entertainment”.

Here are the “key mid-term goals” it announced:

Expand our PC, Blu-ray Disc-related products and component/semiconductor businesses into “trillion yen businesses,” joining LCD TVs, digital imaging (digital cameras and camcorders), game and mobile phones and raising the total number of “trillion yen businesses” to seven.
Ensure that 90% of our electronics product categories are network-enabled and wireless-capable by the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011 (“FY2010”).
Roll out video services across key Sony products by FY2010, starting with the summer 2008 launch on the PLAYSTATION Network.
Double annual revenue from BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries to 2 trillion yen by FY2010.

Its network related plans look interesting as it plans to utilise its unique position, straddling the hardware and media markets to deliver content directly to Sony devices. One example of this will be when, this November, Sony Pictures Entertainment offers a film called Hancock exclusively to internet connected Bravia TVs before it’s available on DVD.

Press release: Sony Group Corporate Strategy Update FY2008—FY2010