Sony's Stan Glasgow talks TVs, Blu-ray

Tag: Blu-ray

After navigating some rough seas, Sony's Electronics division has been starting to right the ship.

Over the past year, the company has been forced to rethink its product lineup and catch up to competitors in some cases, but now the Japanese electronics giant's U.S. division is looking ahead and betting big on the future of flat-panel televisions and high-definition media.

CNET News.com sat down with the head of Sony Electronics' U.S. operation, Stan Glasgow, to talk OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) TVs, Blu-ray Disc, the importance of the PlayStation 3, consumer electronics, and the dwindling margins for manufacturers and retailers on notebook PCs.

During our chat, Glasgow made it clear that Sony is only focused on TVs when it comes to the impossibly thin OLED technology and that soon the company's 3mm-thin TV will be even thinner. And, though the company just won a long and drawn out format war with HD DVD, Glasgow spoke openly about the limits of Blu-ray and what the medium still lacks. Plus, he sounds pretty high on the mini-notebook concept, even if he won't admit the company is developing a product yet.

It's also interesting to watch how well Wal-Mart and Target have been doing, in terms of building more consumer electronics...

Circuit City--we want a very strong No. 2 (electronics retailer). Best Buy is certainly the leading company. We would like Circuit City to be strong. How that gets done--it can be done in many different ways.

My hope is that either by themselves, or by merger, or by working with another company that they'll be stronger than they are today. We think the possibility is there, and we support them. A good, strong No. 2 player in consumer electronics is a positive thing for manufacturers. They've got 800 stores. There are not many companies that have 800 electronics stores.