IFA: Sony boss Stringer defiant as firm takes the fight to Apple and Samsung

Sony's strength lies in content creation combined with hardware, says chief executive

BERLIN: Sony chairman and chief executive Howard Stringer took a swipe at bitter rivals Apple and Samsung during the opening day at IFA in Berlin, as the firm launched a range of products including two highly anticipated Android tablets.

Stringer admitted that Sony had a very difficult start to 2011, but remained defiant in his keynote.

"This year we at Sony have been flooded, flattened, hacked and singed, [but] the summer of discontent is behind us," he told attendees.

"We are more secure and better than ever. We are aggressively expanding into content and offering more amazing value to customers."

Stringer said that Sony had learned from its mistakes with regard to the high-profile hacking of the PlayStation Network, while also managing to have a sly dig at its competitors.

"We've seen more than three billion new customers as the [PlayStation] network came back online, and sales are exceeding what we experienced before the cyber attacks," he continued.

"We are going to take the tablet world to a whole new level and prove that it's not who makes it first that counts, but who makes it better. Yes, Apple makes an iPad. Does it make a movie? Samsung makes devices, but only one company has artists and engineers in abundance."

Stringer invited fellow executives on stage to launch varous products. Sony executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai introduced the Sony Tablet S and Tablet P, along with the revamped Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services and the Sony Xperia Arc S smartphone.

Finally, Fujio Nishida, president of Sony Europe, announced that a new Sony Reader model will launch with Wi-Fi connectivity. The 9mm-thick, 168g e-book reader can store 1,200 books and has a four-week battery life, he claimed.

The Reader will launch in October, and Sony will expand its bookstore to offer 100,000 titles in the UK on release.