In four years – 2013 – one-third to one-half of new Sony TV sets will be 3D capable, according to Sony executive deputy president Hiroshi Yoshioka in an interview with BusinessWeek. Sony chief Howard Stringer last week said the company expects to have $11 billion in revenue from 3D products for its fiscal year that ends March 2013 – only 51 months from now. It has also promised to embed Internet-connectivity and its online SOS service into every consumer device it makes.
Yoshioka admitted Sony had fallen behind Samsung and others in display technology. Perhaps the company perceives it’s too late for its money-losing TV set operations to turn profitable with HD technology and is looking to 3D to save the day.
Sony and Panasonic, partners in the Blu-ray initiative, have been the primary 3D pushers. Both have said they’ll ship 3D TVs in 2010. And both trail the South Korean twins Samsung and LG in sales of TV sets.
Sony has the advantage of owning a movie/TV studio that it can direct to produce 3D entertainment, an advantage it used to make the Blu-ray technology it backed into the industry standard. What Sony doesn’t control is major sports, which appear to have been the main motivation for most HDTV purchases.
As it did with Blu-ray, Sony is also counting on using its installed base of 3D capable PlayStation 3s. It says 3D games will be a major attraction to entice consumers to buy 3D sets. Blu-ray players, whose sales have been better than we expected, are capable of playing 3D videos. DVD discs, by comparison, don’t have the capacity to store 3D movies on one disc.
If Sony’s 3D efforts succeed, it will be a winner on multiple fronts:
It’ll be another reason for video gamers to buy a PS3 rather than a Wii or Xbox 360; It’ll accelerate sales of Blu-ray players, every one from which Sony gets a cut because it owns much of Blu-ray technology; Sales of Sony’s 3D video cameras, both for studios and consumers, will grow; and, of course, Sony intends to have the best 3D TV sets and position itself as THE leader in 3D.
Yoshioka said the deal Sony made to buy flat panels from competitor Samsung caused Sony to lag in its product developments – particularly in LED technology, which allows for super-slim TVs and better HD images.
Instead of LED technology, Sony has said it’s working on the next-generation TV technology, which it says is organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The biggest it has introduced is an 11-inch OLED set. Many 3D sets are expected to be on prominent display at January’s CES trade show.
Whether consumers will take to 3D remains a mystery. The major questions are whether 3D instantly appears better to consumers than their existing HD TV sets and whether consumers will be willing to wear 3D glasses at home.