Earlier this morning, Sony announced that Kazuo Harai will be the new President and CEO of Sony Corp effective April 1, 2012. The company’s current head, Howard Stringer will hand off his position at that point.
Hirai has been heading up Sony’s Computer Entertainment division for some time now, and rumors regarding this promotion have been circling the web over the past couple of weeks. As the head of SCE, he has done so much over the past couple of years to elevate the PlayStation brand and Sony Entertainment as a whole, so this step up is certainly well deserved.
Kaz had the following to say about his new position:
I am grateful to Sir Howard and to the Board for their confidence in me, and I look forward to working with everyone at Sony more closely than ever before to build a strong future for our customers, shareholders, partners and employees.
The foundations are now firmly in place for the new management team and me to fully leverage Sony’s diverse electronics product portfolio, in conjunction with our rich entertainment assets and growing array of networked services, to engage with our customers around the world in new and exciting ways.
Howard, who will be filling Yotaro Kobayashi’s place as board chairman, expressed his confidence in Hirai, saying:
Kaz is a globally focused executive for whom technology and the cloud are familiar territory, content is highly valued, and digital transformation is second nature.
I believe his tough-mindedness and leadership skills will be of great benefit to the company and its customers in the months and years ahead. I look forward to helping Kaz in every way I can so that succession leads inevitably to success.
All of us here at PlayStation LifeStyle want to wish Kaz the best of luck; we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Sony.
