Randy Waymick, SVP for marketing in the Home Products Division of Sony Electronics, said the company will launch its value-priced display line within 30 to 60 days. Several other comments Sony executives made at the event made it clear why the company might want to go in this direction. For one thing, the average price of a 40-inch Sony LCD display is $1,999, which is still a lot of money for many people to pay for a television. Chris Gaebler, vice president for corporate market at Sony Electronics, said that a third of the people who buy flat panels are above the age of 50 - more evidence that flat panels TVs are not quite the mainstream product that the industry would like.
Here are some other tidbits from the wide-ranging conversation, which also included Stan Glasgow, the president and COO of Sony Electronics, a U.S. unit based in San Diego.
- Glasgow said the company now has 50-51 Sony stores, including 40-plus Sony Style stores, mostly in high-end “fashion malls.” One exception to that is the store in the Metreon, a trouble restaurant, retails and movie complex not far from the Moscone Center in San Francisco. “I don’t like the Metreon,” Glasgow said. “There’s not enough foot traffic.” Glasgow said he would be eventually expect to see 50-70 Sony Style stores. He also said the company now has about a dozen outlet stores, and could eventually double that number.
- Glasgow notes that 50% of people who buy high-def televisions don’t even know how to upgrade their cable service to get high definition channels.
- Glasgow says that the retail stores together with Sony’s online store together are now the third-biggest seller of Sony consumer electronics products. He didn’t name to the top two; Circuit City (CC) and Best Buy (BBY), perhaps?
- The company Monday relaunched its SonyStyle.com web site, using IBM (IBM) Websphere software as a back-end platform. Glasgow says the new site is faster and easier to navigate - and that product checkout is easier.
- The company’s best-selling LCD TV model has a 40-inch screen.
- Over the last 18 months, Sony has tripled the number of LCD models it sells.
- Glasgow said the ideal size to really take advantage of high-def screens is 50 inches or larger (not that making the case for larger screens is self-serving or anything).
- Sony is introducing a device known as the Bravia Internet Video Link, a $299 gizmo that will allow you to access selected - and very limited Internet content on a Sony Bravia television. The only content providers so far are AOL, Sony Pictures, Grouper and Yahoo (YHOO). There is no fee for the service; that only seems appropriate, because this thing seems of pretty limited appeal, at least with that small set of content providers (the device was actually announced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show).
- On Friday, Sony started shipping its new $499 Blu-Ray player. The company continues to insist that Blu-Ray is going to wipe out the rival HD-DVD format…eventually. And Sony still has no interest in offering a dual-mode player. The whole industry sold under 100,000 players in 2006; the company expects the market to be 5-6x that size this year (which still sounds like a pretty small market to me…that does not count the Blu-Ray players in the Playstation 3, however).
- Sony execs said its OLED display is “a go” in Japan, where it is selling an 11-inch display. But Glasgow says there are “still real technical barriers” to wider adoption of the technology.
- Asked about the success so far of the Sony Reader, its device for reading electronic books, Glasgow says the he would “like to sell a hell of a lot more than we’re doing.” He says there is a new version coming, but would not say when. As for how it has been selling so far, the company answered only “as expected,” and gave no numbers.
- The company’s Gen 8 LCD glass fab joint venture with Samsung is now in a pilot phase; he says the eventual commercial operation of the plant will allow the company to produce 46-inch and 52-inch LCD televisions at more competitive prices.
- The company will have new music players to announce in the fall; among other things, Sony is looking at offering models with pre-loaded content.
- Gaebler, asked about the use of touch screens in more devices, expressed some skepticism about how they perform, in particular in terms of low battery life. He also noted that some device makers are switching to bigger push buttons on some products to make them easier to use. I floated the question of whether this meant they thought the Apple (AAPL) iPhone would be a dud; they did not take the bait.
- On the rampant use of rebates in the consumer electronics industry, Glasgow said he thinks pricing should be cleaned up, and the use of rebates eliminated.
- On the Sony Mylo, a wireless messaging device targeted at the college market, Glasgow said the company is still experimenting, and that a new generation device is coming soon.
- Glasgow conceded that Blu-Ray players are inherently a little more expensive to build than HD-DVD players.
