Sony to name Kazuo Hirai president: Nikkei

Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, presents the new Sony S tablet (R) and the P tablet during a news conference at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin August 31, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz

Fri Jan 6, 2012 12:38pm EST

(Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp will promote Kazuo Hirai as president replacing Howard Stringer as early as April, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Stringer is expected to remain chairman and chief executive officer, the paper said.

Hirai, who is executive deputy president, currently heads the group's consumer businesses and helped turn its gaming business profitable, the paper said.

According to the report, Hirai's appointment is likely to be finalized as soon as next month at a board meeting.

Sony's PlayStation Network Disaster: What Happens Next?

By Matt Peckham, PCWorld Apr 27, 2011 7:50 AM

It's been a full week since Sony's PlayStation Network went belly up. For five of those days, the outage appeared to be just what Sony said--an outage. Yesterday all that changed when Sony admitted the "external intruder(s)" that prompted them to take the PSN down on Wednesday, April 20th, had in fact grabbed reams of personal information, and possibly (though unconfirmed) financial data such as credit card info. With upwards of 75 million PSN users affected, some are calling it the largest breach of confidential user information in history. Where does Sony go from here?