Sony Ericson has appointed Bert Nordberg as its new president today.
The long-time Ericsson manger with Silicon Valley experience has served the company for 14 years and has been in charge of Ericsson’s software development efforts in Silicon Valley since 2008. He will succeed Hideki “Dick” Komiyama, a Sony executive who had led the venture since November 2007. He will be retiring this year.
The 53-year-old Swede is aware that Sony Ericsson isn’t doing very well in the mobile phone arena. He says he plans to “reinvigorate the company’s lineup of mobile handsets with state-of-the-art software and applications”.
“We need to improve the product design and development processes and we need a different product portfolio to reflect what customers are asking for,” Nordberg, a native of Malmo, Sweden, said in an interview. “And we definitely need to strengthen our offering in the mobile Internet segment.”
The company, an equal partnership between Sony and Ericson (duh), has lost $1 billion since July of last year. According to Strategy Analytics, the company is in 5th place, trailing behind Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola.
Sony Ericsson’s phones largely reflect Sony’s traditional emphasis on camera optics and music. This might be the cause of the problem though. According to Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst in London, the company needs to diversify because those two areas “do not help Sony Ericsson stand out anymore.”
“Since I’ve been living in Silicon Valley, I’ve seen our competitors attack this market from the I.T. and from the applications side,” Nordberg said. “We need to do more of that.”
Oh well, at least he’s very aware of what he’s getting in to. 😉
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/technology/18sony.html?_r=1
