Sony Corporation CEO Howard Stringer said that the hacker that knocked out the PlayStation Network that exploited 100 million customer accounts was a hiccup in the company’s strategy. “Nobody’s system is 100 percent secure,” stated Stringer. “This is a hiccup in the road to a network future.”

Not only has Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced an Apple iTunes and an Amazon.com S3 competitor this past week, they are now challenging Apple TV too. Google’s new product will be called Google TV as announced at the Google I/O conference.

Sony announced today that they have lost $390.5 million (¥37.1 billion) this quarter.  The losses are blamed on consumers cutting back spending on TV and technology. Sony has also blamed currency rates, specifically a stronger Yen that is causing inflation in Japan and cuts away from revenue overseas.

Sony sales dropped 19.2% from a year earlier.  This quarter’s sales were $16.8 billion (¥1.60 trillion).  Operating loss was $267.77 million (¥25.7 billion). Demand for products such as Bravia TVs, Handycam video camcorders, and cyber-shot digital cameras, and Walkman music players have dropped.  There has not been much demand for Sony’s consoles compared to their competitors either.

Sony sold about 1.1 million PlayStation 3 consoles and 1.3 million PlayStation Portables in the quarter.  During the same quarter last year, Sony sold 1.6 million PS3 consoles and 3.7 million PSPs.

From a positive standpoint, Sony motion pictures saw a 6.5% increase in quarterly sales.  The movie Angels & Demons helped trigger the sales increase.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that he expects the company to eliminate 16,000 jobs and cut costs in their 57 factories.

Sony hasn’t taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads,” stated Sony Chairman Howard Stringer in an interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia. “If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc of the US.”

I remember using Connect Player and SonicStage back in the day and its software wasn’t that great either.  The way that Apple iTunes complemented their hardware so seamlessly is far beyond what Sony would be able to pull off.

The interview conducted with Nikkei is pretty interesting overall.  He basically outlines all the strengths of Sony’s competitors including Apple and Nintendo and says how they plan to compete going forward.

[via Engadget]

Sony Corporation President Ryoji Chubachi announced that he is stepping down on April 1.  Howard Stringer, Sony’s Chairman and CEO will remain on board.  Stringer will add President as his title on top of the other two positions. Sony is projecting their first annual loss since the last 14 years.

Later today, Sony plans on holding a news conference to make the announcement.  Sixty-one year old Chubachi oversaw Sony’s core electronics.  He became President in 2005.

The projected net loss for the company is about 150 billion yen for the fiscal year through March.  Last year, Sony had a 369.4 billion yen net profit.  This year Sony is struggling to compete with competitors such as Apple, Samsung, and Sharp.

[via AP]