Sony Corp. announced that it will be replacing Howard Stringer with Kazuo Hirai as chief executive officer on April 1.  Stringer will become chairman of the board after a shareholders’ meeting in June.

“It was my honor to recommend him to the board for the positions of president and CEO, because he is ready to lead, and the time to make this change is now,” Stringer said in a statement.

Kazuo Hirai

Hirai, who graduated from the International Christian University in Tokyo in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, joined a joint venture set up in Tokyo by Sony and CBS Inc., later becaming Sony’s main music unit, Sony Music Entertainment Inc.  In 1995, Hirai moved to Sony Computer Entertainment America, where he became president in 1999 and was promoted to president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in 2006.

Though Hirai appears to be “all about business,” he still has a “chillax” side to him, as he enjoys cycling, driving, as well as collecting cameras, watches, model railroads and telescopes.  Stringer even described him as being “loyal on one hand and well-educated in the convergence products, and I think he has a charming personality.”

Stringer was already grooming four executives since 2009 for the position of CEO, and Hirai, the only one without an engineering background, was one of them.

The Challenge

Sony has been suffering major losses in all their divisions ever since Apple took the spotlight from the Walkman with their iPods, and Samsung in TVs.  It will be difficult to turn things around.

Back in 2000, Sony was valued at $100 billion but with the company’s continued loss, its value significantly dropped to $18 billion.  Sony is countering with plans to write down the value of some facilities, reduce the number of models and cut expenses at its marketing units.

But a change in leadership doesn’t make things right straight away.  Hirai is faced with the challenge of keeping the investors’ faith in the company, and this will only happen if he is able to present a clear path to Sony’s future.