Sony 2009 Annual Report Download - page 15

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Mission and Action Plan
As I mentioned in my letter to you last year, our mission is to
become a leading global provider of networked consumer electronics,
entertainment and services. To do this, we must strengthen each
of the pillars of our core businesses and be coordinated in our
efforts to innovate for further growth.
Innovation has always been one of Sony’s celebrated strengths,
and it is through innovation that we will continue to develop the
unique products, content and services that deliver rich user
experiences and inspiration to our customers.
This innovation is what has driven Sony’s success in the
past, and this in turn has driven our brand—one of the stron-
gest weapons in our arsenal—to what it is today. In a survey
conducted by Harris Interactive, Sony is ranked as the third
most admired company, ahead of all of our competitors,
number three in the Business Superbrands survey of U.K. business
professionals and number four in the Brand Japan Survey.
To let this innovation drive Sony to new heights, we need to
challenge our engineers, designers and producers to enhance our
exciting hardware with a new focus on the software and content
that will help establish our differentiation going forward, nurture an
“Asset Light” corporate structure and efficiently use our capital so
that it will generate sufficient returns on our investments.
Strengthening Networked Software and Content
I have always been enthusiastic about hardware. Sony, as you all
know, has a long and proud history of developing groundbreaking
hardware that has excited customers and first created and then
enhanced our brand. However, customers now expect product
interconnectivity and the convenience that networking can pro-
vide, and we believe that we are uniquely positioned to make
great, innovative hardware with these capabilities. As a result, I am
now equally as enthusiastic about networks as I am about hardware.
Our networked products and services will differentiate us and
make Sony products more valuable to the consumer, and will also
provide more reasons for consumers to buy and use many Sony
products together, with an interoperable Sony solution.
The switch from making pure hardware to making networked
products where the software and user experience are as important
asthehardwareitselfisnotashort-termeffort.Weareconnecting
more and more of our product groups to the network and to each
other, and developing networked content, as well as the software
that ties everything together.
A notable example is the Sony-created PlayStation®Network,
which has been operational since the November 2006 launch of
PS3™ and is used by 24 million customers. And this is only the
beginning. Going forward, we will expand these network services
to a variety of Sony consumer electronics products.