Sony's New Tablet, Stringer's Latest Failure

It has been said and written a hundred times: Sir Howard Stringer is the wrong person to be CEO of Sony (NYSE: SNE). It is possible that no CEO could save Sony from itself, from its lack of imagination and its poor attempts to market its consumer electronics. But Stringer has even given up playing the part as he introduces product after product that the market will reject.

Stringer’s latest pitch is for the new Sony Tablet P, yet another new competitor to the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad, Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) Blackberry Playbook, the moribund Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) Touchpad and new tablets from Lenovo. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is about to launch its own product, which will at least have the advantage of the company’s e-commerce presence.

Sony will launch the Tablet P in its home market of Japan. It will sell for between $500 and $600. That makes it price-competitive with the iPad. But the iPad has 85% of the Japanese market. It has a similar share in other developed countries and has stubbornly held that position despite assaults from a half a dozen major PC and consumer electronics companies.

The Tablet P will come to the U.S. at some point in the next quarter. It will be priced at $499 or $599, which makes its retail sticker close to low-end iPads. “These devices truly represent the best of everything Sony has to offer,” Sony Senior Vice President Mike Lucas said. “From hardware to software and services, Sony Tablet devices embody all our innovations rolled into one.” Sony investors should shudder at the comment. If this is Sony’s best, what does it say about the company’s other products.

Sony says that one of the attractions of its tablet is that the company also can offer a great deal of content because of its ownership of a major studio. Apple, by the way, has deals with most of the major media companies in the world. Those that are not part of the Apple orbit soon will be. Apple has too large a media distribution network with the iPad, iPhone and iPod to be ignored.

Sony’s legacy is its success in game consoles. It has not made the advances it might still make in that business. Instead, it has merely kept track with Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 and products from Nintendo. Sony has elected not to play to its strengths in the consumer multimedia field by making the PlayStation the clear “best of breed” in the industry.

Sony, like so many other companies, thinks that it can take the number two spot behind Apple in the tablet business. This is one case in which being second is little better than being last.

Douglas A. McIntyre