Despite fires in San Diego closing its factory there and
forcing evacuations of its workers, Sony Electronics says it has now caught up
with orders and is expecting a bumper holiday season in the US.
???It could be the best holiday season in the last couple of
years,??? Stan Glasgow, its president in the US, told us at a press event in San Francisco
on Monday night.
His confidence is based on orders from retailers for Sony???s
current third quarter and he also expects returns from a $100m marketing
campaign in the US.
???You will see more advertising than we have ever done
before,??? he said. The emphasis will be on High Definition , with Sony???s HDNA
campaign prominent.
Sony also showed off the new version of its Sony Reader and
an 8Gb Walkman that competes with the iPod Nano. Significantly for Sony, its proprietary Atrac format is gone and it now seems more open
format than Apple, with WMA, MP3 and AAC music files supported.
Mr Glasgow said Sony???s announcements at the Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January would emphasise integration between
Sony???s different product lines ??? a key goal of Sony???s chief executive, Sir
Howard Stringer.
His US president was particularly critical of supporters of
the HD-DVD standard, which competes with Sony???s Blu-ray DVD players. He said
Toshiba and perhaps Wal-Mart had substantially subsidised an HD-DVD player that
went on sale for $99 at the retailer last week.
He also claimed that HD-DVD supporters had paid the
Hollywood studios as much as $500m in incentives to bring out movies in that
format. The studios are also reported to have asked for incentives from Sony and
the New York Times reported in August that Paramount and Dreamworks alone had
received $150m for choosing HD-DVD over Blu-ray for their releases.
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