What keeps Sir Howard Stringer, chairman, CEO, and grand poobah of all Sony-dom awake at night? Recurring nightmares of Steve Jobs, of course. In a forthcoming interview on Australian television, Stringer dishes on the Apple CEO, the iPhone, the iPod, and other stuff that we don’t care about nearly as much.
“In 1997 we were working with IBM on electronic music distribution and could have put this out five years earlier [than iPod]. But we couldn’t get our people to understand software. And we are a music company. They saw digital media, panicked and didn’t like it.” In the end Sony designed a closed music system that didn’t work.Way to state the obvious, Howie; even Pete Rose wouldn’t bet against Steve. We’re going to assume he meant he wouldn’t bet against Jobs “in a cage match to the death against Michael Dell.”In talking about current products, when asked about Apple’s iPhone Stringer said, “The good news is that Steve Jobs spotted a trend that we’ve seen. The phone is a convergence device, between music and a phone. We are all building variations on the same theme. We have sold plenty of Walkman phones [from Sony Ericsson], especially in Europe.”
While Stringer is pleased with Sony’s cellular phone progress, “I would never sit up here and say I’m not worried about Steve Jobs. I wouldn’t bet against Steve. “
Personally, we think Sir Howard never should have given up his dreams of being a product model. Look at the way he holds those gadgets—he’s a natural!
[via Gizmodo]
